Disclaimer:The Ghost Warrior is
a work of fan fiction, which by its nature impinges on someone's copyrights.
Rest assured that no profit is being made from the creation and posting of this
story. With luck, no one with a legal interest in the intellectual properties
involved will take offense. Some readers may recognize this work as an alternate/uber
tale with the basic attributes of the genre. Hopefully any readers morally offended
by the language or content will indulge me and remain silent. Creative criticism
and general feedback are welcome. Email for the author can be sent to phantombard1@aol.com

Written for Halloween 2005

Note:The timeframe of this story is based on 'real' history
and my previously posted story "Clonefic". Because I know that few
people read that complete work, I have included the timeline from it, (Appendix
1). If some characters and backstory seem different from the TV series, therein
lies the explanation. Consider it Alternate Universe.

1

It was a cold and rainy night in late October, just the kind of real-life
cliché setting for mystery and the supernatural. Warrior Grade 2, (WG2),
Trista hated it. An autumn storm front had stalled over the tribal lands. She
hated the way the cold wind bit through her field jacket and swept up her sleeves,
making her feel as if she'd plunged her forearms into running snowmelt.
She hated the chill of wet cloth against the gooseflesh that had once been her
skin. She hated the frigid spittle of icy droplets that spattered on her face.
2200 hours left her 3 more hours on duty tonight. Fate was a bitch.

Keep watch, she huffed to herself as she blinked to clear her eyes, as
if anyone would be out creeping into the compound on a night like this. Sentry
duty on the perimeter where there aren't even any overhanging branches
to offer a little shelter. Yet for all her mental complaints, she would
never give them voice to pass her lips. Instead she gritted her chattering teeth.

Like many of the tribe's warriors she had done a tour of duty in the
US Army, but unlike her non-tribal comrades, she had not returned to the comfort
of civilian life after her discharge. Instead she was huddled in a cement trench
cut through the crown of a hill, 100 feet from the entrance road, shivering as
she clutched an Alpine Hyperlite compound bow, and stared into the darkness through
its night vision sight. All clear...duh. With a sigh she lowered
the bow, blinking again to rid her lashes of water and allowing her vision to
adjust from false green to true darkness.

"Nothing," she whispered softly.

"For the third hour straight and that's a good thing," muttered
WG3 Kalica, the commander of the watch detail. She was kneeling in a puddle six
feet further down the rain-soaked trench staring through her own sight. 'Wait...."

"What?" Trista hissed, jolted to sudden alertness. The weather
receded and her training took over, focusing her awareness. She smoothly raised
her bow and peered through its sight.

"On the road," Kalica said softly, "approaching at 10 o'clock."

Trista swiveled to her left and strained to pinpoint what had drawn the senior
sentry's attention. At first she saw nothing, but then, passing the darker
shadows of the wet pines across the road, she detected motion. An exhaled breath
hissed from between her teeth as the movement resolved into a pale horse carrying
a dark rider. She inhaled sharply, forcing herself to calm even as adrenalin
raised her heart rate. Her eyes locked on the green night-vision image with the
intensity of a hawk.

The intruder was calmly moving forward down the center of the road as if
completely unaware of the weather; the horse's gait a silent, steady walk.
In the false illumination of the sight's green glow Trista concentrated
on the rider; a woman with a sword pommel just visible over her right shoulder.
Her face was in shadow, her features indistinct.

Trista tapped the actuating button on her throat mike and alerted the six
WG1s in the other two sentry emplacements that they had sighted an intruder on
the road.

"She's almost to the marker," Kalica whispered, drawing
an arrow from her quiver with slow deliberation. She fitted it to her bowstring,
preparing to fire a warning shot at the intruder's feet when she passed
the tribal totem lashed to its roadside post. Trista knocked an arrow, preparing
to drop the stranger if she didn't halt at the warning.

They continued tracking the rider's advance. Faintly, the stretching
sounds of two bows being drawn overlaid their breathing as they sought to squelch
their tension. As if in response, the rider's head swiveled in a slow,
deliberate movement. She turned to stare directly at their position! It was for
a heartbeat only, but Trista would have sworn that their gazes locked and the
stranger's lips curled in a wry grin, or perhaps a sneer. Then, right before
her eyes, the intruder vanished, wavering and melting away like a phantasm at
the waking from a dream.

Trista desperately swung her bow, searching for the intruder. For a split
second in her peripheral vision, she saw Kalica doing the same. But now the road
lay empty. No horse walked there and no rider advanced toward them. All was still
as before, silent and deserted, and slowly Trista became aware of the cold and
the rain again.

After a few more moments, Kalica relaxed her draw and motioned with one hand
for Trista to remain in place and cover her. With silent care she slipped off
down the trench.

Trista alerted the WG1s to cover their detail commander as Kalica passed
away into the night with an arrow at the ready, moving warily towards the road.
Trista followed her progress in the night vision scope. Swinging it slightly
to each side, she tried to detect any hostile presences that could constitute
a threat. She saw no one. Kalica advanced to the road unchallenged and then moved
alongside the track until she was beyond the totem. In a defensive crouch she
made her way to the place where the stranger had first been sighted. There she
examined the road for a few moments, and then stood, breaking cover and walking
upright. Trista watched as she finally peered in both directions down the road
before she returned her arrow to her quiver and made her way back to the trench.

"Nothing," she said when she was back in position, "not
a single track."

"Sentries, stand down," Trista ordered the others, then clicked
off her throat mike.

"Ghost warrior?" Trista asked.

Kalica nodded.

They settled again into silence and resumed their miserable watch as the
wind blew and the rain fell, and the damp cold seeped up from the concrete into
the soles of their boots. Both sentries were surprisingly calm about the appearance
of the apparition.

The Ghost Warrior was a part of their history and a reminder of the continuity
of their tribe. As they kept watch through their hours on duty, each reflected
on her place in the present and the stories they'd learned of the past.
They were part of something ancient, a way of life steeped in tradition, and
a part of that which lay beyond the mundane society around them. It gave them
an identity and a source of pride, and it provided grounding in a confusing modern
world where beliefs that were right one day might be wrong the next.

She and Kalica stood before the audience their captain had requested. It
was an informal meeting of a few, hastily gathered in the queen's study.
Cinza, the Captain of the Home Guard, stood to their left, listening intently
as her warriors were questioned. She, Shareen, the Keeper of Lore, and Marieve
the Shamaness were in attendance. Marieve and Shareen sat at the table to the
left of Queen Renée, while dour Sherice, the Queen's Champion, stood
a step behind and to the right of the queen's chair with a sheathed sword
on her belt.

The queen stifled a yawn; it was after 2:00am and she had been trying to
clear the paperwork from her desk before the next day's tidal wave washed
up in her In Box. Running a nation was a job that took almost every minute of
her time. She rubbed her tired eyes and refocused on the two sentries and their
captain. Fate was demanding.

A quick knock of two firm raps came at the door and after a nod from Queen
Renée, Cinza called out, "Enter."

The door was opened by the sentry standing watch outside, admitting Darla,
the Queen's Second. She offered a nod to each of the other women and a
longer dip of her head to the queen, and then took a seat at her sovereign's
right hand. Renée eyed her a moment, a grin curling her lips that brought
a blush to the Second's face.

"Darla, I trust that Connie is well?" The queen asked innocently.
Darla smiled in spite of herself and then contrived a serious expression. She
had arrived late.

"She is well, my Queen," the Second replied self-consciously.

"I am sorry to disturb your sleep on this, the second night
of your post-joining, my friend," Renée said, the light of humor
glinting in her fatigue-brightened green eyes as she wagged her brows suggestively.
Her gaze traveled pointedly to the fresh hickey on the side of her second-in-command's
neck.

Darla choked and put her hands over her face, groaning as the others chuckled.
Even Sherice allowed herself a brief laugh, remembering the tentative kidding
after her own bonding. Darla was fair game for the rest of the week, but unlike
the Queen's Champion, while the Second was also respected, she was not
feared.

Indeed few had dared to tease the tribe's Master Warrior after her
bonding ceremony three years before. At a solid 6'2" and after a
lifetime of martial training, Sherice could be intimidating even to those who
knew her well. She could bring fire and steel to her dark eyes at will, and with
her teeth clenched, shining like bleached ivory against her ebony skin, she could
be a fearsome figure. Sherice had earned that right, having seen combat as a
Marine Staff Sergeant. Only Queen Renée had openly taken every possible
opportunity to hound her with comically lewd innuendoes which her champion had
borne with her usual stoicism.

When the laughter had died away and Darla uncovered her face, she was greeted
with the sight of her queen edging a bottle of spring water across the table
in her direction.

"You seemed to be choking a moment ago," Renée said with
concern. "Some water might help...especially if it's something
you ate still tickling your throat."

At this, even Kalica and Trista cackled. It was a while before a serious
atmosphere prevailed again.

"My Queen, you remain single as yet," Darla finally managed to
say, "and many will relish the day of your joining. The paybacks shall
be many, mark my words."

Renée chuckled at this, knowing it was true. Yet she was already 34,
and for the last ten years she had been married to her duties as queen. The longer
she held the Queen's Mask, the less realistic the possibility of a joining
seemed. She simply had no time in this life for love.

If the queen had held any other position in the tribe, many suitors would
have vied for her heart, for Renée was beautiful, wise, and sexy. She
had been an able warrior during her mother's reign, and though only 5'4",
she was strong, quick, and lithe. A long fall of straight pale hair framed her
heart-shaped face with its piercing green eyes. But even more than her appearance,
it had been the intangible qualities; her vivaciousness, her sensitivity to others,
the grace of her movements, and even the scent of her skin that set desire in
the hearts of those around her.

Many had sought her hand in the years before she took the Queen's Mask
following the death of her mother in a plane crash. From the days of her teens
when she'd trained in the tribe, through the years she'd spent at
universities in the outside world, men and women had wooed Renée. Always
she had eventually turned them down, refusing their attentions past a certain
point, and hoping to retain their friendship. Sometimes bitterness prevailed,
but she had learned to gauge the point at which to withdraw. She did this with
the uncanny skill and finesse of a born politician, and surprisingly often, she
had been able to transmute the heat of passion into the warmth of friendship.

Beyond the borders of the tribal lands, the circle of contacts she had established
over a decade before had pursued their careers and professions in the world at
large. They were part of a reservoir of potential allies that the future queen
had cultivated while she'd worked towards her BA in Political Science at
GWU, and an MPA at Harvard's JFK School of Government. She had been within
weeks of finishing when tragedy had struck, and in the middle of an April night
she had been summoned home. Renée had left the campus for Logan Int'l
at dawn the next day. Before her colleagues at the university had been awarded
their degrees, the princess had become a head of state.

"Yes, the paybacks will be many," Renée agreed almost
wistfully. Then she returned her attention to the sentries. "Tell us what
you saw."

"We saw a dark rider upon a pale horse, advancing at a walk upon the
road from the south, my Queen," Kalica said. "She reached the totem
and then vanished. I found no tracks or any evidence that she had passed."

"She was a warrior and bore a sword, my Queen," Trista added. "She
seemed to sense our presence and turned at the drawing of our bows." She
didn't speak of her feeling that the warrior had stared at her for a heartbeat.

"My Queen, the night is dark and it has been storming since early this
past afternoon. There is no light behind the hill and the trench is almost impossible
to see even in daylight. It should have been impossible for these sentries to
have been discovered under tonight's conditions," Cinza told the
group, "and from 100 feet the drawing of their bows doesn't make
enough noise to be heard over the rain."

The Captain of the Home Guard dipped her head in acknowledgment of the queen's
reassurance.

"Discovered or not they couldn't have stopped her anyway," Marieve
said with certainty. "Our warriors were unable to hinder her even before
she died. Isn't that so, Shareen?" The Tribal Shamaness asked, turning
to the Lore Keeper for confirmation.

"So our legends say," Shareen agreed. "She joined the tribe
by winning a challenge against twenty, but that was a long time ago, and now
we know that we have no need to stop her. I am sure we shall be seeing her again
very soon."

"Well, for once the most appropriate response is also the one most
expedient," Renée said. "Cinza, post guards as normal but
instruct them not to waste their energy on the Ghost Warrior. I would say ignore
her, but we can't let our defenses down entirely. We must still verify
that any intruder seen is actually her."

"I'll issue a notice that she has been seen, my Queen, but that
any further sightings will have to be confirmed," Cinza said. Queen Renée
nodded in agreement.

"Very good, Cinza," the queen said. She looked around meeting
each of their faces and added, "Then I guess that's it, unless anyone
has a question."

Unable to help herself, WG2 Trista blurted out, "Who was she really,
the Ghost Warrior? I mean, I've heard some of the legends, but they don't
really say more than that our tribe is periodically haunted by a warrior from
long ago..." She trailed off, noticing that all the others were staring
at her. Cinza was rolling her eyes at the outburst, never a good sign. Trista
gave her queen an apologetic look, then shrugged and cast her eyes down at the
floor, whispering, "I beg your pardon, my Queen."

Darla sighed and said, "It is late, and this is neither the place nor
the time for a lesson in history."

"Of course not, my Second," the queen teased, "it's
time for sleep. But perhaps if Shareen is willing, any who are curious
can form a group to hear the legend while off-duty, perhaps tomorrow after the
evening meal?"

The Keeper of Lore dipped her head in deference to her queen's suggestion.
It was her duty to maintain the tribe's ancient knowledge and history,
and the education of the women of the tribe in both subjects was her mission.

"I would be glad to recite the legend from the bard's seat after
the meal tomorrow night, my Queen."

Renée nodded and then asked, "Cinza, would you make sure these
two sentries are off-duty following the evening meal tomorrow?"

"Of course, my Queen," the Captain of the Guard said. "I'll
rotate them both onto the afternoon detail and their duty will finish in time
for the meal."

Trista and Kalica strove to remain straight-faced. Their captain had just
agreed to place them on their normal rotation of duty for Saturdays, a mundane
fact that none of the others would have been aware of. Thereafter the meeting
was adjourned and the group dispersed. Each of them had things to consider, but
most of all, Marieve and Shareen.

3

At the 7th hour past noon the evening meal was served in the communal dining
hall and those not on duty gathered for the camaraderie as much as the food.
Here, as in any institutional dining room, long tables were arranged in orderly
rows over most of the floor space. Five lines formed at one end of the hall,
where the members of the tribe waited their turn to file past the cafeteria style
banks of steam tables, cool cabinets, and drink dispensers that separated the
eating and cooking areas. The closer they drew to the food, the more strongly
their appetites were whetted by the tantalizing scents wafting from the kitchen,
an effect that made the orderly progress of the lines seem extended and cruel,
a kind of slow-motion torture. But at last, after taking trays from a stack and
cutlery wrapped in napkins, they made their selections and then returned to their
tables. It was a scene familiar to anyone who has taken a meal in a public school,
a hospital, or a military installation.

As in all such places where so many of kindred spirit gathered to slake thirst
and hunger amongst friends and colleagues and family members, the aggregate of
conversations grew into a comforting din that allowed a measure of privacy to
those speaking cheek by jowl with hundreds of others. It was the white noise
of the hive, the background of a society at idle, and the assurance of an individual's
place within a greater whole.

Near the end of the hall furthest from the cafeteria lines, a table was set
crossways to all the others, and at this table the queen and the officers of
the tribe took their meals at such times when they dined in public. On this night
most were present. It was Saturday night, and though the weekend held a slightly
different atmosphere here than in the outer world, a weekend was still a weekend.
It was a time for increased socializing, greater relaxation, and catching up
on news. The drone of the hive was louder and many dressed better than on the
weekdays, and a great increase in flirting and courting was the rule.

Over the heightened buzz of voices, the leaders of the tribe did their best
to hear each other speak. They could have dined in a private room or even in
their homes, but they all understood that their presence was a source of reassurance
and evidence of the solidarity of their society. It was good form to see and
be seen. It helped maintain morale. But most of all, the queen strongly encouraged
it.

"Where is Shareen? And where is Marieve?" Renée asked
no one in particular as she glanced around for the dozenth time. She furrowed
her brows and looked across the table at Darla, who was seated across from her
with her newly bonded partner, Connie.

"I'm not sure, my Queen," Darla said after swallowing a
mouthful of salmon, "I haven't seen our lore keeper since this afternoon.
Maybe she's been stricken with stage fright? And as for Marieve, I haven't
seen her all day."

"I saw Marieve in the 'puter café around 1500 hours," Connie
offered. The second's wife was one of the tribe's IT specialists
and often took her work breaks in the public access computer establishment because
she liked their coffee. She shook her head with disapproval, making the curly
mane of auburn hair dance at her shoulders. "I believe she was exploring
news groups. I know she was seeding pound cake crumbs into the keyboard again."

"I'll speak to her about it," the queen promised with mock
severity.

Connie giggled and then nudged her tortoise-shell glasses back up onto the
bridge of her nose with a slender index finger. Renée focused on her hand.

"Connie, what's that on your nails?"

The IT specialist held out her hand, presenting her fingertips for her queen's
inspection.

"Jack O' Lantern and dancing skeleton appliqués on a black
base polish," she explained. "It's for Halloween on Monday."

"But of course," Renée nodded with a grin on her lips.
Halloween had always been special for her too, and though Connie could be mistaken
for a ditz and a dork, with her obsession for holidays and her geeky glasses,
she held a doctorate from MIT in computer science. Her dissertation advisor had
submitted the results of an IQ test she'd taken for laughs while at a party
drunk, and she'd subsequently received a membership in Mensa while never
even remembering how she'd qualified. Upon her return to the nation, she'd
redesigned the architecture of their computer systems.

"Somehow I can imagine Shareen with stage fright," Sherice said. "If
you'd like, I could find her and suggest that she join us, my Queen." She
said this completely straight-faced, knowing that the prospect of receiving a
summons from the Queen's Champion could be quite compelling.

The queen pretended to give her offer serious consideration, finally saying, "If
she's still absent after the meal then you should certainly deliver her
to the auditorium forthwith."

The champion nodded. The queen grinned. Darla shook her head at their kidding,
while Cinza chuckled at the prospect. The keeper of lore was a quiet, bookish
woman of 47 years, blessed with a prodigious memory, but she was no warrior and
the complete opposite of Sherice in all respects. Ironically, the Queen's
Champion found the small, almost frail lore mistress an interesting partner for
conversation and the two chatted several times a week. Shareen was actually able
to coax the somber warrior to speak openly because of the champion's reverence
for the tribe's martial past and the warriors of earlier eras. The lore
mistress was also completely non-threatening. The two were preeminent in spheres
of activity wholly divorced from each other and could therefore interact without
a trace of challenge to each other's positions.

"I'm actually more curious about why Marieve isn't with
us," Renée added, "it's not like her to miss a meal."

The others nodded in agreement. The shamaness was known for her appetite,
her fad diets, and her midnight snacks. Though she carried some extra weight
and her features were softened by it, her eating habits could have left her far
heavier. It seemed that no sooner had the queen mentioned her name again than
Marieve strode into the dining hall and made her way to the table. This was another
habit she was known for; appearing as if from the aether when her name was spoken.

"I have been examining some recent events in the world at large," the
shamaness told the others, "and have spoken briefly with Shareen. She was
stricken with stage fright and opted to take her meal in her scriptorium, by
candlelight, with her face pressed to the monitor of her computer. She should
be here shortly." She then cast her glance in a circuit of the other diners,
finally announcing, "The venison looks delicious but I think I'll
have the salmon and the roasted potatoes. It's a meal I would hate to miss." She
then looked at Connie and said, "I shook out the keyboard as I always do," before
she paced away towards the cafeteria lines.

As usual the others, particularly Sherice, watched her leave with an unsettled
feeling. The woman had appeared at the mention of her name, answered their questions,
the second's suspicions, and even used Renée's phrase about
missing a meal. It happened so often that it was regarded as a normal behavior
for her, but it was still eerie to witness.

"I will never get used to that," Sherice muttered as she shook
her head and dug into her salad. Ironically, she'd seen examples of the
shamaness' powers all her life. She was 31, the same age as Marieve, and
they had been raised and schooled together in their youth.

When the shamaness returned with an overflowing plate, which the others rolled
their eyes at, she sat down and immediately began eating. It was only after consuming
half a salmon steak and a handful of potatoes that she took a drink and sat back
in her chair.

"My Queen, there are interesting developments in the world at large," she
began, capturing Renée's attention. "There is a newly opened
school on the east coast which I believe we should examine."

Renée raised an eyebrow in an encouraging gesture and canted her head.

"I have found several references to a martial arts school in Columbia,
South Carolina..." she broke off at the hissed exhalation from the
queen. With a nod she continued, "Yes, there is a connection."

The others at the table, particularly Sherice, stared at the shamaness with
curiosity and suspicion. They turned to their queen, who was now staring off
into space and obviously deep in thought. By the time they looked back, Marieve
had returned to her food. It was obvious that this topic would not be continued
during the meal.

The Queen's Champion felt apprehensive about the hints of trouble from
the shamaness. Columbia had long been a locus of concern to the tribe. In fact
for six decades it had been regarded as a crises waiting to happen. Three generations
of warriors had gone there on scouting missions, had sat in classrooms at the
university, and had reported no immediate danger from the breach that had occurred
back in 1940, half a world away. Yet the tribe had always expected something
to happen. Sherice suspected the worst. She resolved to redouble her training
regime beginning in the morning.

The Queen's Second also felt apprehensive. There was great potential
danger in the knowledge that had fallen into the hands of the outsiders in Columbia,
though so far the impact had been minimal. In fact it had been astonishingly
minimal all considered; just a few obscure scientific papers and a fantasy TV
show that no one took too seriously. It could have been so much worse. The last
queen's second and the previous lore keeper had urged their monarch to
approve a limited strike aimed at the recovery of the material and the silencing
of the academics who had discovered it. Renée's mother, Queen Alcarin,
had refused, deeming the action too liable to draw attention. Her Captain of
the Home Guard had concurred. The debate had simmered for 30 years and nothing
had been done beyond surveillance. Now if something had changed the status quo
then it could mean danger. Darla was worried about the possibilities and the
ramifications for her tribe and her queen.

"Ahhh, Shareen has finally joined us," Marieve said with her
mouth full, not even looking up from her plate.

Renée, Darla, Connie, Sherice and Cinza all looked toward the entrance
where the lore keeper had just opened one of the doors from the hallway and was
walking towards them. They stared at her as she approached, as if Marieve's
pronouncement had gifted Shareen with the status of a ghost. She looked back
sheepishly; everyone else was present.

"I thought I'd join you for dessert," she announced.

"And not a moment too soon," the queen said, shifting her eyes
to the rest of the hall.

Around them the buzz of conversation had risen as more and more of the diners
completed their meals. Soon it would be time for the interested ones to adjourn
to the auditorium for the lore keeper's recitation of the Legend of the
Ghost Warrior, and after the apparition's sighting during the previous
night's watch, word had spread and there was a lot of interest in her forthcoming
presentation.

"Come, my friend, I shall join you in the dessert line," Marieve
said as she rose and set a hand on Shareen's shoulder, steering her away
from the table and towards the cafeteria line. The two were almost immediately
engrossed in conversation. When they had gone, everyone else looked at the shamaness' plate,
finding it miraculously emptied.

"I don't know how she does that," Sherice said in amazement.
The others nodded in agreement. Marieve's plate was completely empty save
for a pile of bones, the slice of baked lemon, and the parsley garnish.

Dessert was a somewhat stilted affair that night. Renée, Darla, Cinza,
and Sherice were worried about the ramifications of Marieve's discoveries,
though nothing further was said about them at the table. Shareen was trying hard
to assimilate what the shamaness had told her and was concentrating on how it
might alter her presentation that was so swiftly approaching. And Connie was
already wondering if she should investigate the browser trail Marieve had left
during her web surf. There might be lateral investigations to be made into the
cause of her mysterious announcement. As they ate, oblivious to much else, the
din in the dining hall grew, members of the tribe became more active, and their
anticipation began to show. Finally when it reached a certain level, known only
to queens and clergy, Renée blinked her attention back to the present
and swept her eyes across the room.

The lore keeper blinked and focused on her queen, then realized that she
had been called to proceed with her program at last. She nodded, rose to her
feet, and turned to face the diners. As she did so, Sherice reached behind the
table, took up a padded mallet, and struck a blow on a hanging gong. The room
quickly fell into silence.

"Thank you all," Shareen began. "As many of you know there
has been a sighting of that apparition known as the Ghost Warrior, and in response
to interest in the legend, I shall be holding a recitation in the auditorium,
beginning in one quarter hour. I hope to see many of you there."

The lore keeper then surveyed the sea of faces staring at her, turned and
dipped her head to the queen, and left to take her place on stage in the auditorium
before the crowd arrived.

"Time to provide an example," Renée told the others as
she rose and crumpled her napkin onto her plate. She took a last sip from her
water glass as the others got to their feet, and then led her officers from the
dining hall before they got trapped by the crowd.

A quarter hour later the auditorium was filling rapidly. The program was
of interest to many and the theater's current movie was in its second week
of showing. Capable of seating 6,000, the tribal auditorium was actually more
a concert hall than a lecture hall. In fact it was rare to have only a single
performer on stage. The space was also used for ceremonies and important announcements,
though both would also be carried on the tribe's closed circuit TV. For
Shareen's performance tonight, about 2,500 were expected.

The lore keeper had seated herself in a comfortable chair, up stage and center
under a single spotlight. Because that instrument was hung almost directly above
her seat, the lighting was stark and somewhat spooky, highlighting her head and
shoulders, but leaving her features in darkness beneath the traditional cowl
of her office.

Up until a few years ago, a small side table would have been placed next
to her chair, containing a pitcher of water and a goblet, but these had been
replaced. Now an unobtrusive cooler beneath Shareen's seat held a chilled
drink bladder, while a long flexible siphon ran to a bendable outlet on the headset
that also held her microphone. This was an adaptation of the hydration systems
used by explorers and Special Forces operators in the field. It made for less
visible interruptions in her recitations.

At Shareen's feet, a teleprompter had been programmed with document
files from the computer in her scriptorium to display the evening's program.
It could be advanced with a small footswitch on the floor. In most cases she
barely consulted it, but tonight she had enjoyed only a short preparation time
to review the material. Worse, Marieve had offered her new insights based on
her investigations of that afternoon. Even as she sat waiting for the audience
to finish seating themselves, she was still trying to decide what to incorporate.
In the end, her queen took the decision from her.

Queen Renée strode out onto the stage and the audience fell silent.
She was wearing the Queen's Mask tilted back off her face and a charcoal
gray pants suit with a champaign blouse. The presence of the mask hushed the
crowd even when displayed informally.

"Members of the tribe...fellow Amazons," Renée called
out, using that rarely spoken ancient name, "we are gathered tonight to
hear a legend from our history. This is a true story from the Old World, from
Hellas, in waning the days of the first strength of our people. It was a time
of tension when civil order and even the gods were changing. It was a time of
upheaval and strife, of challenge and war. And it was a time of greatness.

In those days there came to us a new queen who brought a new perspective
and a new way of living. With her came her champion, a great warrior; the greatest
of her era. She had once been the deadly enemy of all Hellenes, but she became
a true friend to the nation. Together they preserved our people against the threat
of Rome, and none of us would be here today if it not for their bravery...and
their love.

Tonight Shareen, Master Lore Keeper of the Tribe, will recite the ancient
tale of the Ghost Warrior, for we come to that season when, from across the gulf
of years, our past haunts us and we pay tribute to the heroines of ancient times.

Now I know there are several extant versions of this story, but one versionis
regarded as thetraditionally sanctioned truth, and that is the
version we will hear tonight. And so I give you, lore mistress Shareen and the
Legend of the Ghost Warrior."

Renée then turned and swept her hand out to present the seated lore
keeper. The house lights dimmed and the spot light came up, and the queen walked
off the stage. She took her seat in the royal box with Sherice, Darla and Connie,
and Marieve, and then with the rest of the crowd, settled into silence. When
the auditorium was at last so still that the motion of the air could be heard
as a rushing against the eardrums, only then did Shareen break the silence and
begin.

4

For a moment the War Queen of the Amazon Nation watched in awe as her Queen's
Champion moved too quickly for the eye to follow. In a blur the three swordsmen
who had converged on her were slain, their bodies rent and flung from the two
ring blades she wielded. The deicidal Chakram of Day and the morticidal Chakram
of Night flickered in the broken sunlight under the trees of the Amazon Forest.

As usual the tall, dark-haired warrior had cut a swath of destruction through
the legionary skirmishers. She dispatched the last in her way and then moved
to engage the battle formation of the VI Ferrata Fidelis legion's
first centuria, using movements from a training sequence called The
Annihilation of the Line.

Queen Hope knew each movement in that sequence, but no matter how hard she
trained she would never perform them with the same speed and assurance as her
mentor and champion. No one could. Not the Warrior Princess...not even the
God of War himself.

Watching her Champion in action had always made Hope's heart beat like
thunder. Whether on the battlefield or the training field, the sight of her deadly
grace contrasting with her arresting beauty took the queen's breath away.
It had from the first moment Hope had seen her, before her champion had become
an Amazon and years before she had become queen. Through all the years since
she had known that no other would ever take the warrior's place in her
heart. If only...

A sound, felt more than heard, prompted Hope to turn, broadsword preceding
her, head snapping around to verify the target just as she had been taught. Thousands
of repetitions governed her reactions as she handled her weapon, and the sweet
spot, 80% of the way down the blade from the hilt, sheared through the wide,
overlapping bands of the lorica segmentata of a Roman infantryman. Before
he could fall, an Amazon arrow slammed into his chest, pitching him over backwards.
It would have been a heartbeat too late to save her.

Sobered now, the queen returned to the rhythm of the fighting. Her warriors
were driving the legionnaires back towards the eastern border river, while on
the right flank, her champion slew any still foolish enough to come against her.
The legions of the western empire knew better, but these had come from Aegyptus
far away. In the silence after the battle, the tally would be counted at 267
dead by her champion's hand; a good day of fighting. And Secunda had never
even drawn her sword.

By early evening the battle was over. The last resistance had fled back across
the river and the border was secure. Of the enemy, nearly 3,800 had been slain.
Hope met with the hekatontarchoi, the commanders of a hundred, to assess
their nation's losses, ordered her second to arrange for the clearing of
enemy corpses and the claiming of their own dead, and then joined her champion
for their return home. It was 12 July, 31 BC, and the legions of Marc Antony
were moving through Thracia on their way to Actium to confront Octavian.

A candlemark later the leaders of the tribe gathered in the queen's
residence for an evening meal. There presided Hope, War Queen of the Amazon Nation
and daughter of Gabrielle, the soulmate of the Warrior Princess. With her was
the Queen's Champion, Secunda, a warrior from a place and time so strange
that the queen scarcely believed her mother's explanation. In appearance
she was identical to the Warrior Princess. In battle she was peerless. Hope believed
that she could even defeat Xena herself, the onetime Destroyer of Nations and
Hellene's Bane, but on those few occasions when the two met, Secunda addressed
the Favorite of Ares as Strategos and did her bidding.

Also at that gathering were Anara, the Queen's Second, Valara, Medea,
and Hipperia, the Chiliarchoi, or commanders of a thousand, Yakut, the
Tribal Shamaness, Espurgia, the Master Healer, and Baselia the Lore Keeper of
the Tribe. This was not the full Amazon Council, but rather asynedrion,a
military staff meeting of those who wielded power in time of war. And war was
upon them.

Since the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar on 15 March, 44 BC, the Roman
Empire had been in turmoil. The decades of intrigues and civil war were still
continuing, yet the leadership was finally stabilizing at last. The western portion
of the empire had been consolidated under the power of Caesar's adopted
son, Octavian, while the eastern provinces were ruled by Marc Antony and his
consort Cleopatra. Unlike the years of constant danger under the threat of Caesar,
Pompey, and Crassus, the forces of Octavian had ceased their assaults on the
nation, concentrating instead on the internecine slaughter that had followed
in the wake of the power gulf left by Caesar's death. Yet now it seemed
that all was coming to a final battle.

Octavian had won the slow struggle to grasp the power of the western provinces,
while Marc Antony had been gradually marginalized in Rome and left to fester
in Aegyptus. In 42 BC the conspirators Cassius and Brutus had been defeated,
thus avenging the memory of Julius Caesar for the public's benefit. It
had been nothing more than the removal of adversaries. After their defeat, Cassius
committed suicide and Brutus was later slain in a formal duel by Xena's
daughter Eve. The once Livia had finally avenged her own kidnapping by Brutus
in 58 BC.

Next in Octavian's rise had come the defeat of Lucius Antonius at Perusia
in 40 BC. This was followed by the naval battle at Naulochus in 36 BC that brought
down Sextus Pompeius. That same year a supposed ally had attempted to betray
Octavian. Aemilius Lepidus, once the third ruling partner of Rome with Octavian
and Antony, had tried to capitalize on his command of 22 legions, but when he'd
challenged Octavian his troops had deserted him and he'd been forced to
surrender.

Afterwards Octavian was left with only Marc Antony as a rival, and Antony
had estranged himself from Rome by pursuing his affair with Cleopatra, a foreigner
that he favored over his Roman wife, Octavia...Octavian's sister,
whom he had married in 40 BC. Worse, he had attempted to set up a rival Roman
Senate in Alexandria. It was a clear act of sedition.

So now the two camps were preparing for a final battle. Octavian's
troops had marched east through Illyricum and Macedonia, while Antony's
had marched through Asia Minor and Thracia. The battle site was to be Actium
on the western coast of Achaea, where both navies were massing. And on the route
leading from Thracia to Actium lay the homelands of the Amazon Nation.

The nation counted roughly 3,000 warriors in its army; Marc Antony commanded
16 legions with a total of 125,000 soldiers, auxiliaries, and mercenaries. To
this could be added half again as many support personnel. Approximately a quarter
would follow a route that traversed tribal lands. Almost 50,000 invaders were
expected. Technically they weren't even at war, but the tribe knew what
lands looked like after hosting an army of that size for even a short time. Game
would be hunted to extinction, roads cut through forest, water sources polluted,
villages despoiled, and people enslaved, raped, or killed. It was not acceptable.

So that morning, when the scouts who had shadowed the army for the last week
reported that the first legion was marching on the border, Hope, the 28 year
old War Queen of the Amazon Nation, had brought her warriors to halt them. She
had committed the full count of her nation's army, and she had brought
her champion. The battle had been fought in the first mile of open forest within
the nation's border, and this had been a concession. Hope would have preferred
to meet them outside the Amazon lands, but that country was cleared farmland.
Tactically, meeting a Roman army on flat terrain while so badly outnumbered was
suicidal.

Long before, in the days of Themiscyra, when the strength of the nation had
been in its cavalry, a victory under such conditions might have been possible,
but no longer. The might of the old Black Sea tribes was long gone and the Amazons
of Hope's times were forest dwellers who fought on foot as archers and
mixed infantry. There had been no choice but to fight on tribal lands and on
their own terms. Because of that strategy they had won a great victory this day,
but it was only the beginning. A minimum of three unfought legions waited to
march through the Amazon forest, and if they came en mass, wary and expecting
attack, or if they called on Antony to send reinforcements, the ensuing fighting
might lead to the annihilation of the tribe.

After the meal the gathered leaders discussed the tribe's victory and
their jeopardy in the near future. They had won a battle, but war still loomed
before them.

"My Queen, again I urge you to send for Xena and Gabrielle," Anara
said for the dozenth time. "They're in Amphipolis, only eight leagues
away, and their aid would be valuable."

Hope sighed as she watched Medea and Hipperia nodding in agreement. She had
thought of this course almost from the first moment she'd heard the reports
of the scouts telling of Antony's march, and she had rejected it.

"My mother and the Warrior Princess are the mainstay of the defense
of their polis," she reminded them, "and they cannot abandon their
home for us when it is threatened. According to our reports, all 16 of Antony's
legions were expected to march through the Stryma Vale. Besides, they are only
two. They are better off rallying Amphipolis' defenders in their walled
city. We would be better off marshalling the farmers of the surrounding countryside
for their numbers."

"Beg men to fight for us?" Baselia said in shock. "That
just isn't done!"

"It was a joke, Baselia," Hope said in a patronizing tone, "they
have more than their share of worries for their homes too." Though unlike
her more traditional Lore Keeper, the War Queen would have welcomed their aid.
It was just one of many differences between Hope and all those who had come before.
Her attitude was a legacy from the training of her early years under Xena and
Gabrielle, warriors who were far better traveled and far less provincial and
insular than her fellow Amazons. It had been with just such troops that the Destroyer
of Nations had begun her career in 80 BC.

"You could ask the Blessing of...of Him," Valara suggested.

"Ask a male for aid? Even if he be a god?" Hope answered with
a wry tone. "Yes, perhaps I could ask Ares for his Blessing. Perhaps he
would even grant it and we would gain a victory against Antony. But there are
other rivalries I have been told of that span generations, and I am very hesitant
to seek the Blessing of the God of War. You see, although my mother's soulmate
is still Ares' Favorite, Octavian is the Favorite of Athena. The gods have
pledged non-interference with each others' Chosen Warriors..."

"But I thought..." Valara interrupted. Hope silenced her
with a sharp glance.

"Ares has given me the benefit of his counsel at times, but I am not
his Favorite. If our fight against the Romans should by some chance spill over
into a war with Octavian's forces, we would be sacrificed. Octavian does
have the Blessing of Athena. He is fated to prevail and fated to rule the empire.
Our generation is only fated to survive. In a war between two nations, each having
the Blessing of a war god, it would be the resources of those nations and one
leader's status of Favorite that would decide the day."

The others nodded in understanding after Hope's clarification, but
Yakut seemed deep in thought. The queen noted her distant stare and her absolute
stillness. She watched the shamaness out of the corner of her eye. The spirit
world had always given her chills. After a few moments Yakut finally blinked
and looked around to get her bearings. Hope met her glance with an eyebrow raised
in question.

"A messenger approaches, my Queen," the shamaness declared. "Someone
we have not seen in a long time."

"That could be a lot of people, Yakut," Hope said, trying to
pry more information out of the shamaness. "Are they living or dead?" She
grinned.

Yakut smiled. Hope's question was often the opening query when they
played the 'guessing game', a childhood pastime they still used as
a tension breaker. Rather than answer, the shamaness cast her eyes to the entrance
just as a sentry rapped on the door. The queen smiled as she shook her head in
amazement. She couldn't count the number of times her friend had done that...and
always it was a surprise.

"Enter!" Hope commanded, and the door swung open.

"A messenger from Amphipolis, my Queen," the sentry announced
as a figure in a hooded cloak strode into the room. The gait held self assurance
and the bearing was upright, as of a confident veteran warrior. She was tall
as well, rivaling the Queen's Champion in height. The rest of the Amazons
stiffened, for the figure was armed with a sword slung at her back and black
woven armor was visible on her forearms. She moved to the center of the room
and stopped there, then reached up to remove her hood.

At the sight of her several of the Amazons gasped. Now 36 years of age, Eve
was a renowned warrior, but her memory to the tribe was mixed at best. She had
been raised by Xena and Gabrielle for the first nine years of her life, often
residing in the Amazon village with her parents. But Eve had never become a sister
of the tribe. Instead, in 58 BC, she had been kidnapped by Brutus acting on Caesar's
orders, while in the same attack Queen Ephiny had been slain. The act had touched
off a bloodbath. For the first time in memory, a non-Amazon had led the nation's
army into battle. The force of Xena's will as Ares' Favorite had
been irresistible, and the warriors had followed her to war, slaughtering the
army of Pompey the Magnus and paving the way for Caesar's power. And in
that battle, the Army of the Amazon Nation had become the followers of the Destroyer
of Nations.

Under the control of Julius Caesar, Eve had been wholly corrupted, taught
to be little more than a sociopathic warlord sanctioned by Rome. Turned loose
with a legion of her own, she had wrought terror across a wide swath of land
including the country in which the Amazon homeland was located. Hope's
predecessor, Queen Varia, had sworn the nation to vengeance against her with
an Oath of Blood. But the hatred of the whole nation had paled when compared
to the wrath exercised by the Destroyer of Nations.

After swearing a sacramentum bellicus, an Oath of War, before Ephiny's
successor Queen Marga, Xena and Gabrielle had left to wage war on the Roman Empire.
That rampage hadn't ceased until the soulmates rescued Xena's daughter
in 46 BC, and in those 12 years, they had caused the deaths of 86,000 Roman soldiers.
Whole legions had been obliterated, outposts burnt to ash, armadas sunk, and
ports emptied by plagues. The results shouldn't have been so unexpected;
at the age of 19, Xena had nearly taken the city of Corinth with an army of 800
thugs and misfits.

Even though the Amazons had been astonished at the carnage, their awe hadn't
stopped them from wanting to avenge Eve's crimes against them while she'd
been Livia. When Hope had finally challenged and defeated Queen Varia in 40 BC
at the age of 19, she had countermanded Varia's Oath of Blood in honor
of the relationship between her own mother and Eve's. Politically, the
move had helped narrow the rift between the Amazon Nation and the Destroyer of
Nations.

Now Eve stood before the synedrion. It was only the second time
she had visited the Amazon village. Though the Oath of Blood had been nullified
by royal decree, Xena's daughter knew how her presence affected the sisterhood
and she had kept her distance.

Without waiting to be asked her business Eve spoke, showing the same assurance
that her mother had always seemed to posses. It had rubbed off on her over the
last 15 years.

"Queen Hope, I bring you word from our mothers and I seek to give their
counsel to you and your champion." Like her mother, Eve met the queen's
eyes directly and never bowed her head, for like her mother, she was no Amazon.
If any status befitted her, it was that of an estranged older sister.

Hope nodded to her once and then rose from her seat.

"My sisters, since we have finished our meal, let us adjourn for the
night. I will meet with you here in the morning at the second candlemark after
dawn."

The others hesitated but finally rose, saluted their queen, and took their
leave. At Hope's request, only Secunda remained. When they were alone,
Hope beckoned Eve to a vacant seat and offered her a cup of wine and a plate,
then gestured for her to select food from the platters. Eve took her chair with
a sigh and gave the queen a thankful smile for the refreshment. For the next
few moments she was engaged in filling her plate. Finally Xena's daughter
settled, took a sip of wine, and addressed the Amazon Queen and her champion.

"Our mothers send their greetings and their prayers for your safety
and victory," Eve began. "They feel secure in the defense of Amphipolis
since they are not Antony's target. The city is well prepared to withstand
a siege, but they are convinced it will not come to that. They merely need to
show resolve and offer token resistance."

The analysis was good as expected of the Warrior Princess and her soulmate
and Hope nodded her head in agreement. She continued to look Eve in the eyes
and raised an eyebrow to bid her continue.

"They have dispatched me to offer you my aid in battle in token of
the evil and suffering I brought to your people in the past, but also to offer
advice on the coming battles," Eve said. She then turned to carefully regard
Secunda. The Queen's Champion was identical to her mother in appearance.
Xena's daughter sighed. "Secunda, the Strategos reminds
you of your mission and orders that I ask, 'where is your uniform?'"

"I have it with my gear," Secunda reported. "I am committed
to my mission, but I have not worn the uniform of the Conqueror's army
since becoming an Amazon. As always, the Strategos is correct. When
the enemy comes in full force, I will need to use every tactical advantage to
defeat them."

Hope looked at her champion, a question in her eyes. She had not been queen
when Secunda had first arrived, but she dimly recalled the black woven bodysuit
she had worn. It had been a strange and menacing kataphractes, a full
body armor like nothing she had ever seen. Secunda had not worn it during her
challenge, nor had she worn it since. Hope had almost forgotten it existed.

Shortly before Secunda's arrival Xena and Gabrielle had been reported
dead, crucified in Rome on the same day that Caesar was assassinated in the Senate.
Before the shock had fully set in, Ares had come to Hope with an offer of training
and the 15 year old prodigy had accepted. Then, only a week after the news of
their deaths, word had come from Amphipolis that Xena and Gabrielle had returned!
They were not only alive, but they were younger than they'd been when they'd
left. But that hadn't been the final shock. Barely one moon after the news
of the soulmates' survival, a lone warrior had arrived from Rome. She was
identical in appearance to a younger Xena, but called herself Secunda. She had
claimed to be fulfilling a mission for her strategos, whom the Amazons
had soon discerned was the Warrior Princess, and that her primary duty was to
train and guard Gabrielle's daughter.

This news was greeted with astonishment. The council had demanded that Secunda
become an Amazon. Rather than spend the required two moons for the full rites
and ceremonies, Secunda had challenged for the honor. She had defeated a score
of the nation's best warriors in combat with the tribe's full range
of weapons, and she had done so in an afternoon. Normally such a challenge was
fought over a fortnight or more.

Secunda had settled into Amazon life as though it was an old habit. Her prowess
at arms was astonishing. She fought like the Destroyer of Nations, but at inhuman
speed, and she had bled when cut during her initiation ceremony. Secunda was
no goddess. Beyond that, she knew more survival tricks than the tribe as a whole.
If anything, she was the consummate Amazon. Within a moon she was Master Trainer
for the army.

"When the battle comes, I will join you on the front line," Eve
said. With that she stood and drew off her cloak, revealing that she was clad
in exactly the same kind of black woven armor that Hope dimly remembered. At
her waist was the Combined Chakram.

Secunda raked Eve's form with eyes that registered information faster
than any human ever born. She processed that information far faster as well.
She noted the emblems the armor bore; Lion of Amphipolis in gold upon the right
shoulder, the blood red Sigil of War upon the left collar, and upon the right
collar, the Chakram of Day in silver. In a subconscious movement Secunda bowed
her head a fraction. This was the personal kataphractes of the Strategos
Hypatos, the mortal warrior who had defeated a goddess, stripped her of
her sphere of governance, and compelled her to do her captor's bidding.
It had last been worn in battle in a far distant time when the future world had
fallen before the army of the Conqueror.

"Do you know the full potential of that uniform?" Secunda asked.
Eve nodded, 'yes'. "Then I suggest that at dawn we conduct
an offensive action against the invaders."

Hope looked at her Champion with disbelief, but Eve smiled.

"That too was the suggestion of the Strategos."

"My Queen," Secunda said, turning to a confused Hope, "I
ask that we summon the Tribal Shamaness and lay a plan. It may come to pass that
the nation will not have to fight the invaders."

As Helios rose above the Amazon homeland on 13 July, 31 BC, a contingent
came to the border and crossed at the river. In that group were Hope, Secunda,
Eve, Yakut, and a company of twenty warriors under the command of Medea. They
made their way to a low hill a mile from the encampment of the nearest Roman
legion, in clear sight of their advance scouts and forward sentries, and there
they built a fire.

The warriors stripped to their most minimal dance attire, scarce more than
a thong and bra. Medea began beating out a complex rhythm on a drum. The dancing
and chanting started in earnest, and with Hope presiding, Yakut began what appeared
to be a ritual, gesturing and posturing, and calling out phrases of nonsense
in a bastardized variant of the archaic dialect of Themiscyra. She flung sulfur
and saltpeter and powdered antlers onto the fire to create billowing clouds of
foul smoke. And while the Roman scouts stared from a distance, she proceeded
to sacrifice two human victims whose bodies appeared to have been painted with
soot.

All this conjuring was regarded with a nervous derision by the watching Romans,
until the two sacrificial offerings disappeared! The blackened bodies vanished,
completely and in an instant, right before their eyes. Astonished, two scouts
fled back to their encampment to report to the legatuslegionis,
the officer commanding their legion. The Amazons were practicing barbaric sorcery!
Shortly later the remaining scouts were slain by invisible foes, quickly cut
down where they stood. They had never even drawn their weapons.

The forward sentries saw this, and with the returning scouts, they sent an
alarm to the encampment within its temporary stockade. The response to the attack
was swift. A detail of 40 milites, or regular infantrymen, were dispatched
to hold the land beyond the camp's porta praetoria, the gate facing
the enemy, as reinforcements for the forward sentries. When they marched out
of the camp at a double-time jog, they were just in time to see the last of the
sentries falling to unseen foes. This action was in full view of the camp, and
their commanding optio immediately marshaled the men into a double row
formation, with lapped shields and bristling pili, the Roman javelins.

After the last sentry fell dead a tense silence grew. Expectation gave way
to fear and some in the ranks trembled in apprehension, eyes darting about in
a search for foes. They saw nothing and no one.

Then the slaughter started afresh at both ends of their lines. It was as
if a deadly breeze blew across a row of wheat, withering the upstanding stalks
with just a touch of its pestilential breath. Men screamed and fell, hewn down
by invisible blades sharp as a harvester's scythe. The carnage continued
unabated until the last soldier standing at the center of the line died, wildly
slashing at the air around him and screaming about the attack of ghosts. When
it was done, silence reigned again.

Scores of soldiers had clustered in the gateway and more had pressed to the
walls. An audience of hundreds had watched the slaying of their comrades and
horror grew. A buzz of rumors filled the air. 'The Amazons had sacrificed
two victims, two of their own warriors, in a horrible rite to some dark god,
and now the angry spirits of those dead had come upon them, compelled by an unholy
power to do the bidding of their killers.' Men prayed to Mars, their
God of War, for deliverance, but against the two who wore his own ancient sigil
he would not lift a hand.

Finally after a space of horrified moments the camp came back to life. Orders
were called out, troops were marshaled, and the braying of trumpets was heard.
The primus pilus, or commanding centurion, barked orders, and the first
centuria formed up within the gate. The remaining centuria of the first cohort
drew up more slowly behind them. Soon nearly a thousand men stood ready for battle,
facing the porta praetoria. Then for a time there was no further attack.

When the violence resumed, it came not from the porta praetoria,
but rather from the porta decumana, the gate furthest from the enemy.
There the unseen foes wrought havoc amongst the two centuriae of the
10th and last manipuli, or division. Soldiers fell at a fast and horrifying
rate, dropping like flies before a winter's frost. Some drew their gladii,
the standard short swords of legionnaires. Others tried to flee the center of
the carnage. All were swiftly cut down by their merciless and invisible enemies.
In the space of half a candlemark, while the chain of command failed to muster
an effective response, the killing continued tirelessly, and this supported the
belief that it was no living hands that wrought the destruction. The possessed
spirits of the sacrificed dead knew no fatigue, and driven by the Amazons' dark
magick, they would kill until none remained living.

When the 10thmanipuli had been decimated, the killing again abated
for a pace. A few hopeful soldiers dared to breathe with relief that perhaps
the visitation had ended. But before any celebration could begin, an even more
horrific drama took place. At the center of the encampment, screaming broke out.
Some raced to discover its cause. Many others turned tail and fled.

The new disturbance was centered on the tents of the legatus legionis,
and his subordinate legati and tribuni. One by one these highest
ranking officers were dragged from their tents, kicking, pleading, and screaming.
They were beheaded, executed in full view of the horrified soldiers under their
command. In the fountaining sprays of their blood, fleeting and insubstantial
figures were momentarily visible; black, deadly, and definitely female. The existence
of the killing ghosts of the Amazons was confirmed beyond any shadow of a doubt.

The surviving ranking officer, the primus pilus, finally ordered
his remaining soldiers to abandon the camp and flee to the closest legionary
encampment a mile to the east. In the resulting flood of soldiers, the ghosts
struck down men at random, in far separated locations throughout the camp. It
was a horrifying reign of terror.

When all was tallied up and the dead counted, slightly less than 400 Romans
had been slain. But whereas the loss of 3,800 in the battle the day before had
only hardened the Romans' resolve to overrun their Amazon foes the next
day, the loss of 400 to ghosts caused the remaining legions to withdraw a league
from the Amazon lands. The legatus legionis of the V Sythica legion
sent word to Marc Antony himself, reporting the loss of 4,200 men and the state
of confusion that had stricken two of their legions. In response, Marc Antony,
eager to reach Actium and take the most advantageous positions before his battle
with Octavian, ordered his surviving troops to follow another route, bypassing
the Amazon lands entirely. He would settle scores with them after his victory.

In the hearts of many eastern Roman veterans, men who survived the defeat
at Actium and were absorbed into Octavian's legions afterwards, there was
great fear, and many tales of the horror of their battle with the Ghost Warriors of
the Amazons were told. To these, the soldiers of the western legions added their
own stories of the terror of the Destroyer of Nations. She had slain tens of
thousands, avenged her own death in Rome back in 44 BC, and had regained her
youth. She was still the Favorite of the Greek God of War...or maybe something
more deadly still. It would be many long years before the Roman army again assailed
the tribe's homelands.

Now while this history explains the origins of the Roman legends about the
Ghost Warriors of the Amazon Tribe, it does not explain the special place that
warrior holds among the Amazons. For that tale we must look to the times both
before and after the Battle of Actium. Over the course of a lifetime, feelings
were forged, and these were feelings that could not be consummated, for fate
and the designs of the gods forbade it.

Hope, daughter of Gabrielle, had still been 15 years of age when her mother
and her mother's soulmate were crucified in Rome in 44 BC. A week after
the news of their deaths, word had come from Amphipolis claiming that they were
alive again. And before Hope could fully sort out her feelings of loss and sudden
relief, the warrior Secunda had arrived from Rome.

Now during her early years, Hope had been tutored by both her mother and
the Warrior Princess, and she had proved herself a prodigy. Her training continued
sporadically even during the years that Xena and Gabrielle fought against Rome
to rescue Eve, and during that time, the soulmates became a legend to the Amazons.
Being trained as a warrior by living legends, Hope was the envy of her age mates
and many who were older as well. But when Secunda arrived, being even more like
Xena than Xena, and living full time in the village with the expressed purpose
of training and guarding Hope, three things happened. First, Hope became the
object of renewed jealousy. Second, along with most of her peers, she developed
a huge crush on the dark and beautiful warrior. After all, what Amazon teen wouldn't
want a Xena of her own? And third, the sheer volume of erotic daydreaming by
junior warriors exploded into perpetual dazed looks, desperate fingers rustling
under the sheets, and stifled, pillow-biting whimpers in the dormitories at night.
In her fantasies, Hope had an even better version of her mother's soulmate
than her mother did, and this one was, from the very start, all her own.

Yet Secunda clove to her purpose, and her duty was paramount to her. When
other warriors sought to become romantically involved with her, she declined
with firm resolve. Many desired to be the first to win her affections, but she
frustrated them all. Secunda seemed to live only to carry out her mission. This
single-minded purpose, her unnatural prowess, her insistence on referring to
the Warrior Princess as 'Strategos', and her use of twin
uncombined Chakrams set her apart as an object of curiosity and desire.

Three years passed and Hope, already precocious in many areas of expertise,
attained the grade of Master Warrior at the age of 18 years, having amassed the
required 25 kills in battle. She was therefore the peer of warriors twice her
age. Still, Hope kept drilling under Secunda's tutelage. She had long before
learned the basics of weaponry from Xena and Gabrielle, and upon this foundation
Secunda taught her The Annihilation of the Line, and The Smashing
of the Wheel. These signature fighting exercises of her strategos were
thereby transferred to the Amazon Nation and the next generation of its warriors.

Now at that time the tribe was ruled in matters of war by the beautiful and
hotheaded Queen Varia. Varia was a proud woman who was both a gifted warrior
and a skilled tactician. Strong, quick, and agile, she had risen to her rank
in 57 BC at the age of 22, young for a War Queen, yet not unheard of. Many centuries
before, Antiope, the legendary War Queen of Themiscyra in the time of the Achaean's
war against Ilios, had won that office at the age of 17. She too had enjoyed
the favor of a special tutor, an enigmatic Thracian warrior named Prima.

When Queen Varia learned of the rescue of Eve in 46 BC, she had immediately
begun to agitate for vengeance. The queen had fought against Livia's troops
and her pride had been stung by several defeats in which she had lost many able
warriors and many good friends. She pled her case before the nation's council,
and after several months her arguments were accepted and an Oath of Blood was
issued, charging all Amazons to seek to avenge their dead by working for the
death of Livia. Varia hated Livia no matter what name she claimed, and by extension,
she was hostile to her mothers, Xena and Gabrielle. Hope was the couple's
second daughter, and she was no favorite of Varia's for several additional
reasons.

In 41 BC Varia was 38 years of age and had been War Queen for 16 years. The
queen had reached, and some whispered passed, her peak as a fighter. She could
be ruthless and spiteful and had become long accustomed to the exercise of her
will. Seldom did a prize she'd set her sights on elude her, yet just such
a prize had come to the tribe in the person of Secunda. Being identical in appearance
to the Warrior Princess, whom Varia had never liked, yet whose achievements she
had ever envied, the thought of subjugating the tall, dark-haired newcomer was
irresistibly attractive. Varia wanted her, both as her Champion and as a bedtoy,
but Secunda was dedicated to Hope, and so out of all the members of her tribe,
Varia had kept a wary eye on the young warrior who commanded Secunda's
focus, the rising prodigy and her potential challenger, Hope.

In 41 BC Hope became a Master Warrior, one of the last qualifications lacking
before she would be able to demand a legitimate challenge for Varia's own
office. And so, with the habituated reasoning of a dominating personality, Varia
decided it was time to force Hope into a submissive position by demonstrating
her preeminence; she would show the young upstart that she could take what she
wanted. To do this, Varia decided to separate Hope from Secunda and claim the
peerless warrior as her own. She began right at the ceremony in which Hope was
awarded her new status.

"Hope, you're now a Master Warrior and you shall have duties
befitting your status," the queen said with the hint of a grin on her face. "I've
selected you to command a detail a border guards. This'll be your first
chance to perform as a commander of warriors. I have faith that you'll
keep our northern border secure."

"I shall do my best, my Queen," Hope replied, though internally
she had groaned in disappointment. The northern border faced a range of mountains
and it was the last place an invader would choose to enter the Amazon lands.
They usually came across the rolling hills to the west or across the shallow
river to the east. Still, it was a command of her own, and Hope could understand
the queen's intention to test her with a less pressured assignment. As
she had said, she intended to do her best.

"I'll have my second in command draw up the roster and you'll
lead your detail out at first light," the queen told her. "Watch
the lateness of your celebration tonight and spend some time readying your gear...and
beware of how much you drink." Hope never drank.

A candlemark later, Hope returned to her hut and began packing gear for a
fortnight's duty. She had done it all many times before and knew just what
she would need for the season. When she was done, she looked out the door of
her hut and searched the village center to see if she could find Secunda and
tell her of her new command. When she finally spied the warrior, she was seated
at the outermost table in a private discussion with the queen. Indeed, Varia
was pressed to Secunda's side, thigh to thigh, one hand on her back, while
leaning close to whisper in her ear. It could have been an innocent gesture,
with Varia just trying to make her words heard over the drumming, but to Hope
it looked intimate as well, especially the way the queen's hand was moving
in a lazy circle just above Secunda's waist. Hope found herself upset and
unhappy...all right, she admitted to herself, angry and jealous. She slammed
the hut's door closed.

At dawn the next day, Hope led a dozen junior warriors out of the village
and struck the trail leading north. She had been dismayed when handed the roster.
It contained the names of every sullen and substandard performer in their class.
Still, Hope could understand why they would draw duty on the northern border
detail; they were being warehoused, out of the way and under a green commander.
Gabrielle's daughter was being set up to fail. She sighed in resignation.
Somehow she would make it work.

For the first ten days Hope matched wills with the uninspired junior warriors
under her command. She cajoled, threatened, and browbeat them into fulfilling
their duties. On the eleventh day one of them actually noted a movement in the
brush higher up in the pass that led to their border. After taking three others
with her and scouting the area, she determined that there actually were intruders,
and that these were a trio of robbers hiding out after waylaying the wagon of
a merchant on his way to a remote farming hamlet on the other side of the mountains.
Hope deployed her troops to intercept them. When the trio found themselves surrounded
by thirteen archers, they surrendered without a fight.

Apprehending the robbers had been the easy part of the action. Deciding what
to do with them was more perplexing. The robbers hadn't had any intention
of endangering Amazons or invading their lands. They hadn't engaged in
fighting or caused any injuries. During their robbery, they hadn't harmed
anyone, only threatened to. They were a problem for the outside world more than
for the Amazons, but the nearest hamlet lay four leagues beyond the pass that
marked the northern border of the Amazon lands. If Hope released them they would
immediately return to robbing. If she brought them before the queen, Varia would
almost certainly execute them on principle. Hope determined that they deserved
neither freedom nor death.

"Medea, Valara, and Hipperia, you will accompany me to the hamlet beyond
the pass where we will hand over the prisoners to the local authorities," Hope
ordered. "The rest of you will maintain your watch on the border." She
eyed the remaining nine warriors. "When we return, we'll try to take
you like real invaders would. Personally, I wouldn't give you one chance
in four of discovering us before we're upon you," Hope said to them
with a glint of challenge in her eyes, "and I should march you back to
the village as prisoners if we do."

The three who were to go packed up their gear, barely able to contain their
excitement at the opportunity to venture beyond their homeland. The nine warriors
remaining behind groaned in disappointment, but they also bristled at Hope's
challenge. Anara, a popular and rebellious teen was already plotting how to frustrate
their condescending new commander. It had been her personal crusade since day
one anyway. When the four left with the prisoners, the nine left behind began
deciding amongst themselves just how to prove their derisive leader wrong.

Two days were spent on the roundtrip to the hamlet, and the magistrate there
was happy to take custody of the robbers. They were local men gone bad, but they'd
only caused mischief thus far and a stay in the village stocks would satisfy
their victims. After that they'd be put to work in the fields for the remainder
of the growing season.

When the four returned they came to the point in the pass just shy of the
crest and Hope stopped the other three.

"If you were them, what would you be doing right now?" She asked.
They stopped and thought about it a moment. Hope waited.

"I'd set an ambush and take you to the queen as a prisoner," Hipperia
suggested. Hope smiled.

"That's exactly what I'd do," she told them, "and
what do you think we should do about it?"

"We should circle their position and come up behind them," Medea
offered.

"And march them to the village as prisoners," Valara added. Again
Hope smiled.

"Okay then, here's what we'll do," she said, and
the four huddled together to make a plan.

On the 14th day of their tour of duty, when they were to march home to the
village, the relief detail arrived at noon as expected. They found no one at
the sentry camp and no one visible on the pass. In fact there were no signs of
any Amazons that they could see. The new commander sent a party of four warriors
to reconnoiter the trail up to its crest at the border. Anara and her eight fellow
warriors leapt out to ambush them, expecting that Hope had somehow circled around
behind them, but then they stared at their quarry in shock. They were the wrong
four Amazons, but they'd still taken them by surprise.

Further down the trail, Hope and her three warriors appeared out of the bush
and then leapt into the newly set up camp, taking the rest of their replacements
utterly by surprise. When the two groups came together at last, they had a good
laugh over the whole chain of events. It led to a continuing rivalry in which
each detail tried to ambush their replacements while the replacements tried to
counter them, and this became a traditional training exercise that persisted
for many generations.

The warriors on Hope's detail came back to the village much more enthusiastic
about being warriors. In the future they took their training and duties far more
seriously and soon they began to distinguish themselves, much to their instructors' surprise.
Their first-time commander had succeeded in raising the morale of the worst junior
warriors in the village. When Hope came back feeling the flush of success, she
was greeted with a situation that made her blood boil.

While Hope had been ordered away, Varia had been busy. Her campaign to monopolize
Secunda had begun with assigning the warrior to her Queen's Guards. As
a personal bodyguard, the warrior was required to spend a significant portion
of her days attending her queen. In Hope's absence, Secunda found her days
completely occupied with her duties training the army and guarding the queen.
The schedule left her no time during daylight to resume Hope's personal
tutoring.

Among the less welcome aspects of her new duties, the Royal Guards kept their
queen safe during her rest and during her baths. Varia somehow managed to drag
Secunda to the bath house more frequently than she'd ever expected possible.
Indeed it seemed that the War Queen reveled in appearing naked before the warrior
as often and for as long as possible. These displays were accompanied by prolonged
eye contact, smoldering looks, requests for soap and towels, and endless flirtatious
innuendos. The warrior's most difficult task became controlling the rolling
of her eyes.

When Hope returned from her fortnight on guard duty, she was greeted with
the sight of her tutor in the gauntlets and greaves of a Royal Guard, attending
Varia to her bath. She sat outside her hut, jabbed a dagger into the dirt and
watched its shadow move with a growing anger. Hope actually calculated that the
queen was spending almost a full candlemark washing, and this was wholly without
precedent. The young Master Warrior steamed as the sun began passing through
the time she would normally have been training with her mentor. When Varia finally
emerged with Secunda trailing behind her, she made sure to cast a glance at Hope,
accompanying it with a smirk. The two then disappeared into the queen's
hut and didn't reappear until the evening meal. At that point Secunda was
relieved by the night guards and she came immediately to find Hope.

"Were it not for Amazon law forbidding it, I would not hesitate a moment
to bitch slap that overbearing excuse for a queen," the warrior began without
preamble. Hope grinned. Secunda was gritting her teeth and sounded exactly like
Xena.

"I'm really pissed that she's granted you the honor of
serving her as a Royal Guard," Hope said sarcastically, "No doubt
you're flush with the status bestowed upon you by her highness; and you
a fairly recent addition to the tribe at that. Some warriors petition from their
teens for such a position and the pleasure of seeing the queen at her bath."

Secunda groaned.

"Varia is neither as desirable nor as irresistible as she would judge
herself," Secunda said. "I have noted an unnecessary six pounds overall
and the lessened definition of her abs just in the three years since I arrived," she
stated with clinical accuracy, adding that, "She is still quite toned in
the thighs and shoulders and has a strong grip."

Hope rolled her eyes and sighed. They fell silent, Secunda shaking her head.

"How will we continue my training when you're spending the mornings
training the army and the afternoons at voyeurism?" Hope asked a few moments
later.

"Either I slay her quietly while off duty, or we conduct your practice
at night," Secunda answered. "Night practice might be the better
option; you'll be forced to rely less on sight." Hope had been watching
her mentor and noted that she'd been completely serious.

Suddenly there was a rap on the door of Hope's hut and she reluctantly
rose to open it. She found a Royal Guard there bearing a message for Secunda.

"At our queen's pleasure, your presence is required at the royal
hut at once, Secunda. The queen has details for you concerning the training of
the warriors." With a smirk the guard nodded to Secunda, ignored Hope,
and left.

"If you challenged Varia today you would fail," the warrior said. "In
a year you will be ready to defeat her. If I don't see you before then,
I'll meet you at the training ground at midnight." With that she
got up and walked out of the hut, leaving Hope thinking that a year was a very
long time.

Hope slept for three candlemarks and then gathered her weapons and made her
way to the training ground. As expected, Secunda was already there. For a few
minutes, Hope watched in complete awe as the warrior went through a training
exercise at her own full speed. In the darkness, she was a blur. Her sword moved
so swiftly that it was completely invisible. The individual movements were impossible
to follow. The drill lasted three minutes and then resolved into stillness.

Before Hope could announce herself, Secunda softly said, "I have been
reviewing your next lesson. It has been some time since I performed Katalepsis, and
there are some variations I use that are not faithful to the composition of the Strategos.
I will teach you the authentic movements. Now draw your sword and come here."

That night, Hope learned the basics of the culmination of what Xena had learned
about handling the sword during her lifetime at war. Gabrielle's daughter
moved haltingly through the parries and strikes, the flips and the turns, concentrating
on the sequences, not on their perfection. Having seen Secunda's performance,
she already understood that this was an exercise that could take a lifetime to
perfect, but would bear fruit with even a reasonable level of proficiency. Every
movement was direct. There were no flourishes, no embellishments. It was raw
and violent, merciless and devastatingly effective. It was just the kind of fighting
that had made Xena the Destroyer of Nations. It was the swordsmanship of a Favorite
of Ares.

After a candlemark, Secunda dismissed Hope to her hut.

"Rest tonight and practice in your spare time tomorrow," she
said.

Hope didn't sleep a wink. For her, a new constellation of weapons skills
was like discovering a new lover. She stayed up all night, her hut pitch black,
going again and again through the movements of Katalepsis. Secunda had
given her the key to winning her challenge against Varia, and she was resolved
not to wait a year. It was traditional to make such challenges at the Festival
of the Solstice of the Sun, and midsummer was nine months away.

By her 19th birthday a month later, Hope could finally work through the Katalepsis without
missing any movements. She had come to understand what each move meant, and she
had learned which moves conferred each of the 100 deaths the exercise encompassed.
She couldn't yet do the sequence at combat speed; far from it, but she
could complete the exercise without mistakes.

Secunda watched and nodded with satisfaction. Her pupil was learning the
last formal sword exercise she could teach. It was the last exercise her Strategos had
taught her, or more rightly, had taught her twin "sister", while
performing it on a cliff above Amphipolis on a night when Xena had thought she
was alone. Secunda expected that it would probably take Hope another two or three
months to perform the exercise with confidence. She would then spend the rest
of her life making it second nature. When she could execute the techniques from
somatic memory, when pure instinct ruled her every action, then she would know
the true lesson of Katalepsis; to fight with in a controlled blind rage,
to vent an uncontrollable wrath with unconscious precision, and to slay without
thought or remorse, this was the final lesson of the Strategos. It was
not technique; it was spirit.

Autumn led to winter and then winter to spring, and Hope continued to practice
as the year 40 BC opened. Varia continued to exert her wiles upon Secunda, and
though she didn't succeed in persuading the warrior to her bed, she flaunted
the exercise of her prerogatives in grasping her time. She never missed a chance
to demonstrate her authority over Secunda while Hope was present. And at every
opportunity, Varia ordered Hope out of the village. There were sentry details,
security details for trading missions outside the homelands, diplomatic missions,
scouting missions, and guard duty. While gaining much practical experience, the
young Master Warrior grudgingly became an inspiring and efficient leader whose
service was ever more frequently requested by the senior commanders. Through
it all Hope chaffed and Secunda endured, and Varia became ever more frustrated.

As her frustration grew, Varia's temper began to show. The queen snapped
at her field commanders, disregarded her advisors, and browbeat the junior warriors.
In the bath she made Secunda watch as she blatantly pleasured herself in the
water and often again as she dried herself afterwards. At any time in which she
could arrange to be alone with the warrior, she subjected her to a barrage of
exhibitionism. The queen exercised her seductiveness with pathological obsession,
acting more and more compulsively as time passed. She finally took to assigning
the warrior to guard duty in her bed chamber, where she entertained the many
willing younger warriors hoping to curry the favor of their queen. Secunda was
present, 'lest some ambitious young thing plotted to harm her queen
while in the throes of passion'. The reasoning was so contrived as
to become the main subject of village gossip for weeks.

All this ground upon Hope nerves, and each time she returned from some foray,
she was bombarded with tales of, 'Varia is said to have done ___',
or 'Secunda was present for the defloration of ___ for her queen's
pleasure', or worse, 'it's only a matter of time before
Secunda succumbs to the sheer volume of hormones directed at her'.

The young Master Warrior was seething by the Festival of the Spring Equinox.
That night, when a very drunk Varia draped herself over her favorite bodyguard,
rubbing herself full length against Secunda's tall form, Hope very nearly
challenged her right then and there. The sloppy kisses the queen plastered her
mentor with made Hope's blood boil, but with a stern look and a barely
perceptible shake of her head, the dark warrior belayed Hope's intentions.
Instead, Secunda hoisted the besotted queen over her shoulder and carried her
back to her hut in an undignified and disgraceful display. The entire village
chattered and snickered about it for weeks.

Thereafter, Hope practiced every moment she could. Her increasing maturity
had transmuted her teenage crush into an aching desire for her mentor, for now
she was feeling the longing for a soulmate of her own. No one she had ever met
encompassed anything remotely close to the wisdom, selflessness, and prowess
of her warrior. Now her own frustrated longing for Secunda's affections
drove her like a slave master's goad, equaling her wrath at the queen.
She was stretched tight as a bow string. And so finally the young warrior achieved
that state of controlled rage necessary to understand the disciplined fury and
the beauty contained in Katalepsis. She would never have Secunda's
speed, or the Destroyer of Nations' depth of personal experience, but she
had attained the unacknowledged status of '2nd most deadly Amazon warrior'.

On June 17th at two candlemarks past midnight, Secunda watched her protégé complete
the exercise for what seemed the thousandth time. At last the moves flowed with
deadly intent. At last Secunda could see the killer inside waiting to be unleashed.

"Demand the challenge tomorrow and set the date for the Summer Solstice," Secunda
told Hope without preamble, "you are ready."

Hope stared at her teacher, her words fresh in her ears, and then in an uncharacteristic
outburst of emotion, she grabbed the tall warrior in a hug and burst into tears.

June 18th dawned rainy and windy, but Hope stood in the village center and
proclaimed her challenge for all to hear. Heads poked out of huts and when they
understood what was happening, many voices rose to pass on the news. There was
to be a formal challenge for the Queen's Mask; a proper challenge steeped
in tradition, not borne of a moment's passion or anger. The last time such
a challenge had been made, it had been announced by a youthful Melosa nearly
forty years before.

Thereafter, the young Master Warrior marched directly to the queen's
hut and sought entrance from the Royal Guard on duty. She was announced to the
queen and the queen came to her door. She could do no less; honor and tradition
demanded it and the whole village was watching. Varia acknowledged Hope's
challenge with a grimace, agreed to meet it at the Solstice Festival with her
sword, and then slammed her door in the young warrior's face. Standing
in the runoff from the hut's roof and soaked to the skin, Hope grinned.

The rain continued on the 19th and during the morning of the 20th before
abating with an incoming front of high pressure during the mid-afternoon. Artemis
graced the festival day with fair weather, clear, hot, and dry. The practice
field had been groomed by dozens of junior warriors, anxious to give any increased
chance they could to the one they still thought of as their own. For her part,
Hope had continued to practice, performing her exercises in the rain and mud,
wholly oblivious to the conditions. During her drills she'd felt little
more than the pounding of the blood in her veins and the dark desire for vengeance
on her queen. Secunda wondered if Hope would slay Varia as she herself would
have, or if she would be tempered at the last moment by her humanity, a trait
she'd inherited from her birth mother.

By tradition the challenge began at noon so that the sun shone down equally
on both combatants. It would be fought using the primary weapons only, and it
would be fought until one party either yielded to acknowledge the dominance of
the other, or was slain. The defeated party would then be subject to the mercy
of the victor. The tradition behind it was traced to the original challenge of
the first Cyane, the semi-mythical leader who had given the Amazons their identity
in that ancient time before the knowledge of metals.

Such challenges were rare. Every Amazon in the village was in attendance.
Varia had neither defended against a challenge nor fought a challenge to attain
her position in 57 BC. Rather she had been the designated successor of Queen
Marga, who had been slain in battle by Prince Morloch. Queen Marga too had taken
the throne without fighting a challenge. She had been the designated successor
of Queen Ephiny, who had been slain in combat with Roman legionnaires under the
command of Brutus in 58 BC. Queen Ephiny in turn had been the successor of Queen
Terreis, and she the successor of Queen Melosa. For most of the gathered Amazons,
a formal Challenge of Succession was a page from their history, not a reality
of their lives.

Queen Varia was now 39 years of age and had been War Queen of the Amazon
Nation for 17 years. She was regarded as a great warrior, and more importantly,
great with a sword. Before Secunda had appeared, Varia had been preeminent on
the practice field, sparring with the wooden training swords, taking on all comers,
and fighting off multiple opponents for the instruction of the junior warriors.
Four years ago, all that had changed. First to be defeated in Secunda's
challenge for admission to the tribe, Varia had never really gotten over her
humiliation at the stranger's hand. She had thereafter shunned the practice
field.

Even so, Varia was still formidable. She had fought many battles and had
led the nation's war against Helicon. There she had slain all who had faced
her. In fact the only enemy who had ever really defeated her was Livia. The queen
was still strong and quick, and if not as flexible or tireless as in her youth,
she was still more than a match for all but the best fighters in the tribe. And
she was a canny and experienced opponent. If she had a major flaw, it was a lack
of finesse; she had always been one to overpower her foes with brute strength
and ferocity, intimidating them with flurries of stinging blows and the application
of unrelenting pressure. In light of the fact that she held an advantage over
her challenger in height and weight, strength and experience, she intended to
force the fight from the start and hoped for a quick, decisive win.

For her part, Hope had studied her opponent closely. She knew Varia's
strengths and weaknesses, right down to the slight arthritis that affected her
right ankle, the result of an arrow wound in her youth. Perhaps the queen would
be less agile when turning abruptly to her right. She would certainly be confident,
and maybe overly so. And she had not maintained her training regime in the last
few years.

As tradition dictated, the queen preceded her challenger onto the practice
field. Her name and title were announced and she stood receiving the accolades
of her tribe. In her royal leathers, studded with war beads and talismans, Varia
cut an impressive figure. Many cheered for her, for she had long been a brave
leader and a powerful queen. After her introduction, Varia waited in the ring
set aside for the combat, swinging her sword to loosen her shoulders. Her features
reflected confidence, but there was a hint of grimness there too. She would have
preferred Hope intimidated, subservient, and obedient to her will, whereas now
there was a good chance that she would have to kill her.

Hope entered the combat ring after being announced by Varia's Second.
She carried her sword without a sheath, laid at rest over her right shoulder.
No warm up was necessary for her; she had been up since dawn doing her usual
practice. Now as she made her way to the ring's center, her fellow Amazons
noticed how solidly built she actually was. Though short like her mother, Hope
was outstandingly fit and toned, even among a tribe of warriors. Muscles rippled
under her tanned skin and showed with a definition that reported on an almost
total absence of body fat. Her blonde hair was cropped short and bleached almost
white by the sun. But most disturbingly she bore to the challenge, not her own
Amazon sword, with its 26", leaf-shaped, double-edged blade. Rather she
carried into the ring Secunda's war sword, a 32", double-edged weapon
whose sides tapered nearly straight to a bitter point. It gave her almost a hand's
length advantage over her queen, and though no one else knew it, the tri-tempered
Mitsubishi Hi-Core steel blade was actually lighter than the Amazon forgings.
Like Secunda, it too had come from a time and place beyond the understanding
of the Amazon Nation.

Varia eyed her opponent carefully. She noted the level of conditioning apparent
in her body and the weapon she had seen slay hundreds of foes in the hands of
the Royal Guard who had refused her advances for three-quarters of a year. The
symbolism was obvious to her and to all those watching. Secunda cared more for
her youthful charge than for her queen. The gift of a personal weapon for such
an important occasion was a gesture of love between warriors; the acceptance
of it an equal declaration.

The queen's gaze finally strayed to Hope's eyes. No better gauge
of an opponent was there than that most intimate of 'windows into the soul'.
Varia hoped to see fear or uncertainty there. Instead she read an overwhelming
hatred in Hope's emerald glare, and then in the next instant it faded to
the frigid and impersonal look of a soulless killer, the look of a serpent or
a daemon. It came as a complete shock. When had the young warrior become so utterly
cold?

Varia had only seen that look a handful of times before; on Secunda's
face in battle and on the face of the Destroyer of Nations as she'd declared
her sacramentum bellicus. Suddenly the challenge took on a new and fateful
gravity. On this day the queen would either kill or be killed; she was no longer
fighting a challenge to keep the Queen's Mask, she was fighting to keep
her life. While Varia doubted if Hope even cared about ruling the tribe, she
was absolutely sure that Hope wanted her dead.

Moments ran together as the rules of the challenge were announced. Neither
combatant heard a word. Both were focused only on each other. When the signal
to begin came, Varia moved to open with her trademark combination of overhead
strike-backhand slash-forehand slash. Her blade met only air. Then Hope counterattacked.

As Varia's blade passed her body on the final slash, Hope flicked a
short, backhand, cutting motion upwards, slicing the underside of the queen's
sword arm and drawing first blood. She saw the queen recoil from the wound by
reflex, and as she had learned in Katalepsis, she followed her set up
and completed the attack. Secunda's sword whistled softly with the breath
of death. With a turn of her wrist the upward motion of the blade was converted
into a backhand slice, powered by the straightening of Hope's forearm from
the elbow. It was purely a finesse move. Hope's body and shoulder remained
still while her strong forearm and the sword's lightness did the work.
The distal handspan of the weapon cut through Varia's throat, severing
her neck almost to her spine. Hope withdrew two paces and waited.

What Varia had felt seemed almost like a swift slap across her neck and a
slight stinging sensation. She moved forward again, but when she took a breath,
the sensation became like one of inhaling water. Her lungs reacted to the fluid
and went into spasms. Varia choked and coughed, desperate to clear her airways
and continue before Hope went on the offensive, but the hacking and gagging only
became worse. Other than the wound to the underside of her upper arm, she didn't
even realize that she had been hurt. The realization only struck her when she
saw blood; a lot of blood, suddenly filling her mouth and pumping down over her
chest.

As the Amazons watched in horror, the queen dropped her weapon and reached
up to clasp her neck. She was still choking, and the wet gurgling noises coming
from her signified a bleeding injury to her airway. Hope was standing still,
watching her die with an eerie calm, as if she were waiting for the expiration
of a hog or sheep at slaughter. Varia grasped her neck and in doing so, parted
the sides of her wound. Then a fountain of bright arterial red sprayed up under
a fast pulsing pressure, raining down over the queen and painting her in her
own life blood. She stood thus, unable to scream, unable to move, petrified in
horror and still not wholly cognizant of her fate.

A deathly silence settled on the audience as the macabre tableau continued,
drawn out unnaturally it seemed. Then in that act of mercy which Secunda had
half-expected to see, Hope moved forward and without hesitation hewed off Varia's
head in one clean stroke. The defeated queen's head fell to the ground
with a sickening and clearly audible thud, and then her body toppled, crumpling
first to its knees, and then keeling over sideways.

Now after wining her challenge, Hope became War Queen of the Amazon Nation.
Four moons still stood between her and her 20th birthday. It was the first time
in centuries that a queen had taken her mask before celebrating her second decade.
Still, the still shocked council confirmed Hope's position and a subdued
nation ratified it with their fealty. The challenge had been so much swifter
and one sided than they'd ever imagined it would be. Most hadn't
even clearly seen the two winning blows for their abruptness and speed.

Hope immediately named Secunda Queen's Champion and relieved her of
her duties as Royal Guard and Master Trainer of the army. Her next act, and also
her first Royal Decree, was to rescind Varia's Oath of Blood against Eve.
Then she sent messengers to Amphipolis to tell her mothers what had come to pass.

Over the following years, the young queen opened closer relations with the
surrounding hamlets and villages, signed a treaty of mutual support with Amphipolis,
the nearest real city, and on many occasions, offered her services as a mediator
in local disputes. Gradually Hope became known as a reformer, and as the old
guard of the Amazon leadership passed or retired, she filled those positions
with younger Amazons sympathetic to her. By 31 BC, only Espurgia the Master Healer,
and Baselia the Tribal Lore Keeper remained from the days of Varia's reign.
Hope would replace neither until death took them. Both had supported her faithfully
during her rule and both were preeminent in their fields.

But Hope seemed to lack one thing; a mate. She had always looked to Secunda
as the focus of the love she felt. Her teenage crush had matured into a deep-abiding
affection that also made her blood boil with desire; no one else came close in
her heart to the strange dark warrior. All those feelings had been focused to
a point on a winter's night as 40 BC have way to a new year.

Hope and Secunda were ensconced in the royal hut quietly talking about the
changes Hope desired to make, and as always, Secunda's advice was of paramount
importance to the new queen. But on this particular night there was something
even dearer to the queen's heart that she needed to discuss. It was a testimony
to her personal courage that she gave her feelings voice so candidly. The youngest
War Queen in over a thousand years laid her heart at her Champion's feet.

"I know you came here to fulfill a mission for Xena, and there is no
possible way for me to thank you," Hope told Secunda. They were seated
on a couch before the hearth and had turned to stare eye to eye.

"I don't seek your thanks, though I'm happy to be appreciated," Secunda
replied. She could already tell where this conversation was headed. In fact,
she'd expected it for some time.

"Wait...let me finish," Hope said softly. "When you
first arrived, I was smitten with you like every other junior warrior. Your presence
was like having Xena in the village, but as one of us, not as the Warrior Princess.
And you were here for me...Xena was always there for my mother. Compared
to everyone else, even her, you were stronger, faster, wiser, and always so very
beautiful. My heart throbbed when I thought of you and I did everything, listened
to every word, and tried my hardest, just hoping to impress you and win your
heart. I still do, Secunda...I still try to make you proud of me...and
I still hope more than ever to win your heart. You already have mine, you know.
You've had it a long time."

She would have continued but Secunda was shaking her head 'no',
and though the motions were small their meaning was clear. Hope held her breath
and waited for her to speak.

"If I really was a part of this world and free to seek love, I would
join my heart to yours forever," the warrior said, "but there are
reasons why that should never be. You've been told of my origins; your
mothers have told you our story. Read between the lines, Hope. You're smarter
than anyone else here. You'll understand those reasons if you just still
your heart long enough to think about them."

Hope indeed sat thinking about the story her mothers had told her when they'd
first visited after their return. The shock of seeing them alive...and only
half the ages they'd been was soon eclipsed by their unbelievable tale.
They claimed to have been recreated in a future so distant as to be incomprehensible.
They were not the same individuals as her original mothers, but they were identical
to them and knew everything that had happened in the past. And like Secunda,
neither of them had a birth mother. They were what they had called 'clones',
a meaningless word for an unacceptable concept. Magicians or gods had created
them...maybe.

"For there to be a future, both you and Eve have to bear children to
ensure the continuation of your bloodlines," Secunda said softly. "I
can in no way hinder that. The mission my Strategos charged me with
was to Protect the Nation, protect our soulmate's daughter, but
the reason behind that order was to insure that your bloodline endures. I can
never complete my mission if my company keeps you from finding a mate and having
children. And yes, I know about the Amazon ways, but if we join as soulmates,
how much interest will you ever have in becoming a mother?

Look at Xena and Gabrielle," Secunda continued, "there was scant
room left in their hearts for you and Eve. Their lives centered on their adventures
and on each other. I know the idea of another person touching Gabrielle ignites
a rage in the Strategos, and I believe the same fire burns in your birth
mother. Would you ever be able to bear the touch of a man to become with child
while being committed heart and soul to me?"

Hope closed her eyes and tried to imagine it. It wasn't easy, and what
made it worse was that she was already less than interested in raising a child.
Maybe that would change as she got older, but maybe not. And yes, she acknowledged,
Gabrielle had left her to follow Xena into battle, and for a dozen years Hope
had remained in the village while the soulmates had tried to rescue Eve. They
had followed their thirst for vengeance through the Bloody Years, parenting neither
of their children as they sought to retake the one who had been kidnapped. Between
the ages of two and fourteen, Hope had seen her parents only sporadically. And
yet when she had seen them, they had showered her with love and taught her the
foundation of what she had learned since. Despite everything though, she knew
that Xena loved her mother more than anything in the world. That would never
change. One other thing would never change even as Hope grew older; she would
forever be in love with Secunda.

"Whether I join with you or not, I will always love you," Hope
said with brutal honesty, "and whether or not I bear a child, I will never
cease in that love. You're right; in being joined I'd have even less
desire to find a mate even for a night. I would want only you just as I do now,
but I would know you as I do not."

Secunda closed her eyes and sighed. She herself was torn. Being originally
a clone of Xena, her soul resonated with Gabrielle's, but Gabrielle was
the soulmate of the Warrior Princess. There was no cloned soulmate for Secunda
in this time. And yet...Hope was so close to Gabrielle, so much like her
in spirit, perhaps even more like Gabrielle than Gabrielle. In that way Hope
was a perfect match for Secunda, each of them a distillation of their forerunners.
The clone had felt the attraction and the possibility hidden within it from their
first meeting four years before. She had struggled with it ever since. But Secunda
was a clone from a far distant future and her actions could bring ruin if she
caused a fundamental change in this present. In no way could she contribute to
Hope's failure to reproduce. Compared to this imperative all else paled,
even the needs and desires of her own heart.

"My Queen, I will love you until the day I die, and if I have a soul
and if it endures beyond this life, then I will love you until the end of days.
But I have no place in this world except to insure the future, and though I was
created for a very different future than the one I work for now, I cannot act
while knowing that I might bring that future to ruin. If I were truly human I
would give you my heart, but I fear there is no strand upon the Moiré's loom
to weave my life's fate."

Hope knew then that she had Secunda's heart and soul, and yet she would
never truly have either. Unlike the cloned warrior, the queen believed that Secunda
had both a soul and a fate. How could she not? The situation seemed impossible
to resolve and her love would go unsatisfied until the end of her days. Never
would she bask in the warmth she knew the joining of their hearts and souls could
bring. In anguish the young queen wrapped her arms around her mentor and broke
down in an uncontrollable flood of tears. Hope was truly human and she had a
heart and a soul, and both were breaking. Fate was cruel.

Secunda wrapped her arms protectively around her young queen and held her.
Almost she came to believe that she too had a heart, for she felt it breaking.
The queen never knew that as she sobbed with her face pressed against Secunda's
chest, a slow and silent trickle of tears ran down the clone's face and
into the pale corn silk of her hair.

In September 31 BC Octavian won his war with Marc Antony at Actium but Antony
escaped the field. In 30 BC he defeated him a final time in Alexandria, and in
the aftermath both Antony and Cleopatra took their own lives. Thereafter, no
one truly stood in his way.

In January 27 BC Octavian became Imperium proconsulare with power over
the western provinces. In those days he pardoned Eve and reconciled the empire
with the Warrior Princess and Gabrielle. In July 23 BC, when he became Imperium
proconsulare maius and tribunicia potestas with power over the entire
empire and influence within the city of Rome, the soulmates became his envoys
from the Imperial Province of Macedonia to the Amazon Nation. And in the next
year, when the great emperor began his tour of the eastern portion of his empire,
he spent a week encamped outside the Amazon homeland, meeting with their queen
and forging a lasting peace.

In mid-22 BC Queen Hope, then 37 years of age and the Favorite of Ares, took
counsel with Octavian, then known as Caesar Augustus. For the first time, she
met the Favorite of Athena. In a case of the greatest irony, she felt herself
attracted to him and him to her. For that week they were virtually inseparable,
and for three of those nights they shared dinner, entertainments, and the sleeping
couch in his tent.

After he left, Hope wondered just what had happened. The time they’d spent
together had been productive, yielding a treaty and twin girls, but to the end
of her days, she never understood the temporary attraction she’d felt on those
nights. Her love for Secunda was undiminished. She felt nothing for Augustus.
For her part, Secunda understood exactly what had happened. The hands of the Moiré spun
more than cloth on their loom. Fate was devious.

Contrary to her prior beliefs, Hope was a good mother, attentive and loving,
and strict when necessary. Her daughters, born in early 21 BC, became warriors
and co-rulers of the nation in their time. In their youth they’d enjoyed the
favor of a special tutor. But the love of Hope and Secunda, while always simmering
beneath the surface, never burst into the flames of passion that they knew they
could have kindled. And so the years passed.

In 4 BC when the cloned warrior was 66 years of age, she donned her uniform
one last time and went from the village by night. She was never seen again. Hope
was then 56 years of age, but absent her soulmate, she passed away from grief
less than a year later.

From that time forth it has been the legend among the Amazons that the soul
of Secunda comes forth from the land of the dead to seek her soulmate, and this
happens most often near the time of her death, on the last night of the 10th month
of the year…only a few days after what had been Queen Hope’s birthday. But it
is also the legend amongst the Amazons that the spirit of Queen Hope is reborn
from time to time, for having sacrificed her love once for the tribe she will
not sacrifice it again, and so she remains alone, waiting for the reappearance
of her soulmate. So ends the Legend of the Ghost Warrior.

Shareen’s voice fell silent and the stillness of the auditorium was complete.
For many moments no one moved, and as before she had begun speaking, the ghostly
rushing of air against the eardrums was the only sound.

5

"My Queen, the Columbia School of Martial Science was opened in September
of this year by Serena Pappas and Gabriella Covington. They are the grandnieces
of Melinda Pappas and Janice Covington. It‘s said that they closely resemble
the actresses who portrayed Xena and Gabrielle in the TV show,” Marieve reported.

Pappas and Covington…again…Queen Renée groaned and asked, "Do we know what
they teach in their school?” Long before the TV show, Melinda and Janice had closely
resembled Xena and Gabrielle.

"That is the problem, my Queen. They are passing on Amazon fighting techniques
from the scrolls that were lost. During all those years while we did nothing
but observe them, those old professors were translating, and they somehow managed
to teach what they’d learned to their descendants. This is a disaster.”

The queen tended to agree. The Amazon techniques were a system of fighting
that derived from what Secunda had taught Hope long before. It was a deadly system
and it had long been the edge that had kept the nation safe. If those techniques
became widely known, the knowledge could fall into the hands of anyone with the
time and desire to learn, and given the condition of the modern world, at least
some of those who learned would cause great evil. At the start it would depend
on the teachers and who they accepted as students, but with each generation of
students and teachers the pool of possible miscreants would widen until odds
dictated that some of them would abuse their knowledge. It had happened with
every system of fighting ever taught. Even the Amazons had been forced to hunt
down a renegade more than once.

"Sherice, you and Darla will go to this school and observe it,” Renée ordered, "and
be prepared to test its teachers.” The Queen’s Champion and the Queen’s Second
nodded. "Take the small jet and leave at first light. Report your findings to
me when you understand the situation.”

The small gathering that had followed Shareen’s performance broke up. It
was already late. Dawn would follow in only six hours and it was two hours by
car on Route 2 to the airport near Alliance.

Left alone in her study the queen stifled a yawn. It seemed as though she
was doing that all too often these last few years. Another Pappas and Covington
pair…they were the last thing she needed now. There was always so much to do
and behind everything else, the nation waited for her to produce an heiress.
The pressures of ruling the modern nation left no time to even contemplate raising
a child. The next time Renée felt a yawn coming she closed her eyes and indulged
it. Pappas and Covington again…huh, at least her chair was comfortable. The queen
let her head loll sideways and before she knew it, she was asleep at her desk.
Fate was exhausting.

Daybreak found two women waiting on the tarmac at the local airport. One
was notably tall, with dark, tightly curled hair, her eyes shielded by black
Gargoyles, the other was of average height with fair hair. They had the disciplined
bearing and upright posture of military officers, but both were dressed casually
in comfortable civilian clothes. Each had two pieces of luggage, a rolling carry-on
and a thin hardshell case about three and a half feet long. Because of those
cases, they would not be flying by commercial airlines.

From a nearby private hanger a Gulfstream III taxied out onto the runway
and moved toward the waiting passengers. It was a comfortable, long-range, corporate
jet with a cabin that seated 10. Today it would carry only the two flight crew
members and two passengers. Their destination was Columbia Owens Field. In a
few minutes the women were aboard and getting settled for the flight, while in
the cockpit, the captain radioed the tower for runway clearance. Unlike a commercial
flight with the congestion of a large international hub, there was only a five
minute delay before they were airborne.

"Flight time will be three hours and five minutes,” the pilot reported. "Enjoy
the view; it’s a beautiful day for flying.”

"That’s Denise,” Darla remarked, "It can be the middle of a hurricane and
she claims it’s a beautiful day for flying.”

"She flew support and mission aircraft off a carrier during her stint in
the Navy,” Sherice said, "just pray you never fly when she’s piloting a ‘copter.”

"You rode with her back then, didn’t you?”

"More than once,” the Queen’s Champion admitted. "In the Gulf she had a bet
going with the other pilots as to how many meals she could make her passengers
launch.” The big ex-Marine actually chuckled. "Once she inclined a chopper so
hard that a corporal lost his balance and shot out a window. We’d just been extracted
following an op and had still been returning fire from hostile ground forces
as we took off. Our weapons were loaded and the safeties were off.”

Darla shook her head. Sherice had a vast collection of tales from her days
in the military, but she rarely shared them, and sometimes she would fall silent
in the middle of a story when the trail of memories led to a dark place. Her
tour had encompassed Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and some missions in Iraq that
were still classified.

"Marieve downloaded the articles she found and I’ve got ‘em on my laptop.
Want to take a real look at the situation?” Darla offered.

"Once an officer always an officer,” Sherice remarked, "always prepared for
a briefing.”

At Darla’s pained expression the champion chuckled and said, "I was an NCO
not a commissioned officer, remember, and at heart I’ll always be a grunt.”

Darla gave her self-deprecating Amazon sister a warm smile. "You’re so much
more than that, my friend. You always have been.”

For a of couple hours the two reviewed what the Tribal Shamaness had found
on the internet. It amounted to a handful of articles, some current, some background
on the two teachers, and a few about the two professors. It painted a picture
of outsiders obsessed with one aspect of Amazon history, specifically where it
had intersected with the Destroyer of Nations and her soulmate. For Janice Covington
and Melinda Pappas it had all started with authenticating Xena’s existence. The
connection to the Amazons had been incidental. But the year before they had discovered
the contents of ‘Ares’ Tomb’, Janice Covington had excavated the site of the
contemporary Amazon village, and there she had found scrolls that the professors
had first attributed to Gabrielle, and later to Secunda and Hope. It was these
which were the most troubling to the modern Amazons.

Among the scrolls containing lore and mundane records were a set that contained
the teaching manuals for warfare, wilderness survival, the ceremonial calendar,
philosophy, the law, healing, agriculture, animal husbandry, and construction.
In short, when taken together, the scrolls contained an original primer on Amazon
life.

The modern tribe was a shadow nation, a forgotten civilization coexisting
within a mainstream society, and the last thing they desired was publicity. It
was the legacy of centuries of survival through invisibility. Their queen’s nightmare
was that someday a group of extremists would arise, associating themselves with
the ancient Amazons, perhaps even using their name while partaking of a twisted
and perverted variation on their beliefs, and skewing society’s perception against
the real nation. In the following witch-hunt, they would again be forced to disperse.
Their modern cultural renaissance would come to an end.

Darla raised her head from reviewing the files and closed the laptop. She
looked over and noticed that Sherice was sound asleep. Thereafter the two sat
silently, the Queen’s Champion napping, the Queen’s Second stewing in her own
thoughts. The last hour of the flight passed by quickly and when the pilot announced
the landing, Darla shook herself awake. She found that she’d dozed off.

"1140 hours…time to rise and shine for lunch,” Sherice chided as she stood
up and reached for her luggage. The plane was still in motion but that made no
difference to her.

With the flight time and the change in time zones, five hours had officially
passed since takeoff. Darla hastily reset her watch but remained seated until
the plane came to a stop. By then, Sherice was waiting at the cockpit with her
bags, speaking to Denise.

Columbia, South Carolina was a moderate sized city, a college town, both
warmer and far more populous than the plains where the tribe had been settled
for the last century and a half. The two women made their way to a Hertz counter
and picked up the car that had been reserved in their names. On the road, they
made their way to the Marriott by Capitol City Park and claimed their room. The
tribe maintained an open corporate account with the hospitality chain and members
stayed in their hotels wherever possible.

"We’re less than a mile from the school…walking distance,” Darla said after
they’d dumped their bags in their room. "I feel like walking after sitting in
that plane all morning. Let’s go have a look around.”

Sherice just nodded and began pulling on a pair of low rise Air-Tac shoes.
Darla slipped a Sony T-7 digital camera into her shirt pocket. In a few minutes
they were out of the hotel and wandering up Assembly St., heading towards the
campus of the University of South Carolina. They walked at a leisurely pace,
attracting little attention, and memorizing landmarks. All around them students
moved lazily, relaxing on a Sunday. After about twenty minutes they came to a
charming diner from a bygone era, and finally a couple blocks further on, the
very school they’d come to see. It was a standard storefront premises with a
souped up black Z-28 Camaro parked out front. Sherice looked it over with hungry
appreciation. Darla snapped pictures.

Though it was lunch hour, the school was open. The two Amazons peered through
the large front window and into the space inside. It looked like a thousand other
martial arts schools they’d seen over the years; polished wood floor, equipment
racks, a mirrored wall, and a dressing room in the back. There were only two
figures visible, but their appearance made the two Amazons catch their breath.
Marieve had said that the teachers resembled the actresses who had portrayed
Xena and Gabrielle on the TV series. ‘Resembled’ didn’t do them justice; they
were identical. But these were no actresses.

Serena and Gabriella were engaged in training, and as the Amazons watched
from outside, the movements they made were easily recognizable; broadsword against
paired short swords, they were performing the two-person routine that had been
developed from the exercise The Annihilation of the Line. It was a shock
to see. Not only were they using secret Amazon techniques, but they were performing
them at combat speed and with every bit of the confidence and power that only
the best warriors of the tribe could muster. Then in the midst of the exercise,
both women abruptly stopped and turned to look at their guests on the other side
of the glass. Sherice and Darla held their eyes.

Serena had felt the chill on the back of her neck and with a look had signaled
Gabriella, but the blonde was already edging around to get a better view out
the window. By mutual consent they ceased their practice and looked. There were
two women standing on the sidewalk, a tall dark one with the look of a hardened
warrior, the other of average height but exuding an air of authority. Perhaps
they were military personnel, or serious competing martial artists. They definitely
weren’t the usual after-hours gym nymphs or aerobic class girls from the university.
After a prolonged mutual perusal, a look passed between the soulmates and they
moved towards the door. At the same time, Sherice and Darla made up their minds
to confront them.

The four met just inside the school’s entrance. Serena Pappas noted that
the taller stranger topped her own 5’11” by a good three inches, an unusual situation
for the tall brunette. Gabriella Covington noted a small tattoo of an inverted
chevron above the shorter woman’s left eyebrow and she nudged her partner to
direct her attention to it. The Amazons noted that the two teachers were barely
winded and only the slightest sheen of sweat showed on their skin. They were
both in excellent physical condition.

"You perform The Annihilation of the Line very well,” Darla said, "especially
for not having had a teacher.”

Her words left Serena and Gabriella speechless. Never in their lives had
anyone identified one of their forms or commented on its quality. They looked
at the Queen’s Second while she visually examined their weapons. The swords were
authentic looking reproductions of those used by the Warrior Princess and the
Amazon Bard, but they were modern forgings showing a slight bluish tint from
the constituent trace metals of their alloying. The warriors of the tribe had
changed the weapons over the centuries since the originals had been used in battle,
and the modern Amazon blades had different patterns.

"Whom do you teach at this school?” Darla asked Gabriella.

"So far we have only four students,” the blonde said, "two city policemen
and two teenage girls. We’ve only been open about seven weeks.”

"How’d ya know the name of the exercise we were practicin’?” Serena asked
the two strangers. After noting the tattoo that Gabriella had seen she was intensely
curious. The symbol was actually two, short, converging lines, each about a quarter-inch
long, and almost connected at the apex of the angle they formed; it was the mark
of an Amazon Queen’s Second, or it had been two thousand years before. In those
times, if a second became queen, two more lines would be added forming what looked
like a diamond.

"I think you know that, or at least suspect it,” Sherice said, speaking for
the first time.

"And I think we have things to discuss,” Darla added. "What you’ve learned…what
you’re teaching…could be very dangerous to us.”

Serena sighed and walked over to the mirrored wall. She pressed briefly on
the glass of the front-most panel and a hidden magnetic latch released. The mirror
sprang outwards a couple inches and the tall brunette pulled it open wide. From
the concealed space behind she brought out two thin hardshell cases, one like
those Darla and Sherice had brought from the tribal lands, and the other shorter
and wider. She set these on the floor, opening the larger one and stowing her
sword inside.

"Let’s head over to the diner,” she said, "we can talk there.”

Gabriella nodded in agreement and moved to store her paired blades in the
shorter case.

After closing up the school the soulmates led their guests to the Congressional
Diner, the same establishment the two Amazons had noticed earlier on their walk.
They found seats at a booth inside and ordered coffee from a bouncy young woman
who greeted Serena and Gabriella by name.

"That’s Angie,” Gabriella told them, "and she’s one of our students.”

The two Amazons nodded; the girl hardly looked dangerous or inclined to evil.

"So, why don’tcha tell us who ya are an’ why we might be a problem to ya?” Serena
asked. She’d clasped her hands on the tabletop and was regarding the two women
with an open glance. Between them the steam from their mugs rose in scented curls.

Darla exhaled slowly while Sherice remained silent. The second was trying
to find the right words to express her tribe’s concerns without antagonizing
the two teachers. So far they’d gotten off to a cordial start and she didn’t
want to ruin it.

"For decades we’ve known about the scrolls your great aunts found in Macedonia,” she
said, "and we’ve been very thankful that during all the years since, they only
published the ones pertaining to the Warrior Princess and her partner. Now we’ve
learned that some of the most sensitive knowledge contained in the remaining
scrolls is being taught as practical combat training. It’s a potentially dangerous
situation, especially if you have advanced students capable of digesting the
more lethal techniques. We don’t want that knowledge finding its way into the
wrong hands.”

"Have you begun teaching them what you were performing?” Sherice asked. "Have
you demonstrated The Smashing of the Wheel or Katalepsis?”

Serena and Gabriella stared openly at the women. Except for their great aunts,
no one had ever mentioned those names to them before, and now they were almost
sure of what the two strangers were. For both of them, but for Serena in particular,
this was the realization of a lifelong dream.

"All four students saw us performing Katalepsis as a two person exercise
the first day they came,” Gabriella finally said, "but they had no idea what
they were seeing. In class, we’ve concentrated on basic conditioning exercises,
adding some unarmed techniques with the two advanced students. Weapons training
is far in their future. I was thinking to start the policemen with the Euzonos drill.”

"Maybe in a few months,” Serena added doubtfully. Then she took a deep breath
and said, "You two’re Amazons aren’t ya? No one else would know ‘bout the things
we’ve learned or would have any worries about ‘em.”

"I’ll go further,” Gabriella said as she looked Darla in the eyes. "You bear
the mark of a Queen’s Second, and your friend is probably a Praipositos,
a senior commander of some kind, maybe a Chiliarchos, or a Queen’s Champion.
I can infer from this that there is also a queen and an army to defend her, and
therefore a nation for her to rule.”

The blonde teacher’s analysis was good and there was little cause for dissembling.

"All that you say is true. I’m Darla, Queen’s Second and 2nd Lt.,
US Army retired. This is Sherice, Queen’s Champion and SSgt, US Marine Corps
retired. We serve Queen Renée, the seventh of her line, and are members of the
Southern Tribe of the North American Amazon Nation.”

Serena Pappas let out a long slow breath and shook her head. What she’d always
suspected was true. The nation had not passed out of existence with the fall
of the Roman Empire in 410 AD. It had persisted invisibly during all the long
years since. She had argued this point for years with a skeptical Janice Covington
and had never fully convinced her partner, but she had lived with her daydream
and the hope of someday meeting women who were steeped in the culture she’d spent
her life studying. For that reason she had immersed herself in the scrolls. Both
she and Gabriella, whom Serena had first met in elementary school, had undertaken
the training, but without an existing cultural framework they had always been
adrift. They knew what an ancient Amazon would’ve known, but not what the present
Amazons knew; two millennia of history and all the adaptations those centuries
had demanded. In the face of the confirmation of what she’d always suspected,
Serena blinked back the sudden wetness threatening to spill from her eyes. Gabriella,
so attuned to her emotions, gave her thigh a comforting squeeze under the table.

At the uncomfortable looks from the two Amazons, the blonde said, "I don’t
think you understand what you mean to my partner. Your existence has validated
Serena’s lifelong beliefs. She’s always had faith that you existed and always
hoped to meet your people one day. She has prayed that what our grandaunts spent
their lifetimes studying as history would come to life for her.”

Darla and Sherice nodded their understanding.

Serena whispered, "How many?”

"Roughly 80,000 worldwide with almost 14,000 in the US and Canada,” Sherice
reported, "and about 6,700 of them live on our tribal lands with the queen, including
the army which numbers 3,000. There is another compound in Ontario, home of the
Northern Tribe, and roughly 2,800 dispersed throughout society at large.”

"Someday I must see it,” Serena muttered in amazement. What the Queen’s Champion
had claimed was far beyond anything she had ever hoped for. The nation was much
larger than it had been in ancient times, and apparently much more organized.
Now Serena desperately wanted to see the reality of her dreams. Being less affected
emotionally at the moment, Gabriella was more practical.

"You said you’ve known about the scrolls for a long time. So why have you
come here now?” She asked Darla. "What have you finally been ordered to do here?”

"Our queen has ordered us to observe you to discover just how much of a threat
you are. Whatever action she decides to take will be based on our report. While
the knowledge in the scrolls was being kept quiet, we were content to bide our
time and observe. It’s only because you’ve begun teaching that we’ve finally
come. Our people have been watching with concern for decades.”

"Ya know, durin’ all the years when I’d only hoped that the Amazons’d survived,
I thought it would be worthwhile to learn their ways an’ eventually teach it
to women who might one day actually choose to live by it,” Serena said with a
distant look in her eyes as she thought back over the motives that had driven
her. "In a way, I ‘spose I was seekin’ to reinstitute the Amazon way of life
an’ maybe even recreate a tribe. I’d found a nobility an’ empowerment in the
lifestyle the scrolls described that touched my desire for an alternative to
modern society. Call it a dream if ya will, but in a small way, I was tryin’ to
recreate what ya already have.”

"I don’t know how much you learned about our grandaunts,” Gabriella said, "but
there are probably some facts that you never uncovered…things they seldom spoke
about. What do you know about how they discovered the scrolls in the tomb?”

The two Amazons thought about the question for several moments. History was
not really their forte. Shareen would have been a better person to answer the
blonde’s question, but of the two present, Darla had more knowledge of the overall
situation.

"We know that they were in competition with a Nazi treasure hunter named
Smyth, that they managed to trap him in the tomb, and that they escaped with
the scrolls before it collapsed. There were supposedly many traps and fail safes
built into the structure. We assumed they were either very careful, or very lucky.”

"They were both careful and lucky,” Gabriella agreed.

"They met somethin’ there far more deadly than all the traps,” Serena said, "but
from that experience, they gained great knowledge. They learned who they really
were an’ it changed their lives forever.”

Sherice and Darla heard the tone in Serena’s voice and it sent a shiver up
their spines. When Shareen recounted the legends of the tomb as they’d periodically
reviewed the situation in Columbia, she’d always alluded to a rumor that she
refused to elaborate on. Now they felt the tingle of the supernatural impinging
on the real world in the sound of the tall teacher’s voice, and in the same season
when the Ghost Warrior rode again, it was all the more immediate. Rather than
speak, they regarded Serena with expectant eyes.

"Our grandaunts claimed that they met the God of War himself in that tomb,” Gabriella
said, "and that they fought him there to keep him from escaping into the modern
world.”

"Hell, they claimed Mel’d been possessed by the spirit of the Warrior Princess
when she fought with Ares,” Serena told them. At the shocked disbelief on the
Amazons’ faces, she added, "At that time, Melinda was the last livin’ descendant
of Xena, an’ Janice was the last livin’ descendant of Gabrielle. Whether or not
it’s true, they believed it completely. I was never sure myself, never saw any
ghosts, but Mel claimed she’d learned things from Xena that weren’t in the scrolls.”

Darla and Sherice tried to digest what they’d heard. It wasn’t easy. Nowhere
in their historical database was there any reference to the entrapment of Ares
in the tomb, or to living descendants of Xena and Gabrielle, but they knew some
things the archeologists hadn’t back in 1940.

The tomb had been sealed in 411 AD. Rome had fallen to the Visigoths the
year before and the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire were being overrun,
therefore the timing was right. Ares, then known as Mars, had ceased to be worshipped
when the empire fell. He had vanished for all practical purposes at the same
time the tomb was sealed, and into that tomb had been placed the scrolls of the
warrior bard Gabrielle. Then the village had been abandoned and the nation had
become invisible, its members blending into the society at large, and its ancient
knowledge preserved only by word of mouth and a cache of scrolls buried in what
the later Amazons came to consider sacred ground; the site of the Macedonian
village.

As for the claim of distant kinship between the archeologists and the Warrior
Princess and her soulmate, there was simply no way to be sure. Prudence demanded
skepticism, and yet where the spirit world was concerned, almost anything was
possible. Perhaps Marieve would be able to divine the truth.

Amazon history did acknowledge the offspring of both ancient warriors for
six more generations, for Hope’s descendants had been royalty and Eve’s had been
allies. But one thing held immense gravity; if Melinda and Janice had been the
true descendants of Xena and Gabrielle in their generation, then Serena and Gabriella
were their counterparts in the present. And if this were true, then Darla and
Sherice sat in the company of the heiress of the Destroyer of Nations and her
soulmate, a descendant of queens. The potential danger or benefit to the nation
was far greater than they could have imagined.

"Excuse me for a moment,” Darla said, rising from the booth and quickly making
her way outside. She pulled a cell phone from her belt on the way and pressed
the keys for memory dialing. A train of numbers connected her with the Amazon
Nation and the Office of the Queen. After a short pause, a worried Renée came
on the line.

"My Queen, I have an update on the situation in Columbia,” Darla reported. "The
danger may be lesser or greater than suspected. The teachers are proficient with
swords; we saw them practicing The Annihilation of the Line. They are
not yet teaching sensitive material to their students. However, they have told
us that their grandaunts were the last descendants of the Warrior Princess and
her Bard, and therefore they too hold that distinction. Furthermore, when the
scrolls were discovered in the tomb, Melinda Pappas was possessed by Xena’s spirit,
and under her influence, engaged in combat with the God of War. The archeologists
collapsed the tomb to trap him. If this is true, then Serena Pappas might be
subject to possession at any time. Could she not also be possessed by the Destroyer
of Nations?”

The Queen’s Second remained silent while she was given some brief instructions.

"Yes, my Queen, by your command,” she said and then closed the phone.

After reattaching it to her belt, the Queen’s Second took a deep breath.
Her orders were simple but with so many unknown factors there could be great
danger in their execution. For the first time in a long time, she felt a thrill
of fear as she looked down the quiet Columbia street. A few students walked the
sidewalks, maybe going to lunch or to study, while a few cars moved by them at
a careful pace. Overhead the sun shone down past a few clouds. A gentle chill
breeze ruffled her hair. It was all so ordinary and so unthreatening, as if society
at large slept like a contented dog. Darla wished that for once they could let
a sleeping dog lie. With a sigh, she went back inside the diner and took her
seat with the others. Sherice looked at her expectantly. She gave the Queen’s
Champion a small, grim smile, her lips unevenly curled past clenched teeth; they
had new orders.

"Do you have a class tonight?” The Queen’s Second asked the two teachers.

"No, we don’t teach on Sunday,” Gabriella answered.

"Then we need to determine how much you’ve learned and what to tell our queen,” the
second said. "We would like to meet you tonight for sparring.”

The soulmates looked at the Amazons and then at each other. Silently they
weighed the pros and cons, but both were intrigued with the idea of testing their
knowledge against women who had learned within the tradition they’d studied all
their lives. In the end their answer was almost preordained.

"We could meet ya at the school at 7pm,” Serena answered, "will that work
for ya?”

"That will be fine,” Darla said, "1900 hours it is.”

That afternoon, Serena and Gabriella ate energy bars at 4:30, napped until
6:00, and then went to the school to warm up before meeting the Amazons. Darla
and Sherice had gone back to their hotel room, made one call to update their
queen, and then rested. At 6:30 they dressed in black cotton/lycra gym shorts
and tees, sweat socks and Air-Tac shoes. Over these they wore sweat suits. They
picked up their weapons cases and left for the short drive to the school. Much
as they would have hated to admit it, both were pumped with adrenalin from the
anticipation of facing armed opponents of known quality and unknown capabilities
with traditional weapons. It was a rare situation.

Serena and Gabriella had spent most of an hour warming up. They were completing
a set of cooling down exercises when the door buzzer sounded and the two Amazons
walked in. It was precisely 1900 hours.

The two pairs of women came together in the center of the school. Greetings
were exchanged and the Amazons stripped off their sweat suits. The four were
dressed remarkably alike, save that Serena and Gabriella wore more revealing
sports bras rather than tees, and their shoes had been made by Converse. The
real surprise was that in addition to her broadsword, Serena bore a Combined
Chakram in her left hand, while Gabriella was wielding a pair of blackened and
ventilated blades.

"We could use a few minutes to warm up,” Sherice said, "it’s chilly out and
cold muscles are a handicap. This is to be a sparring session, not a battle.”

The soulmates nodded in agreement. Coming into a fight cold could result
in unnecessary injuries from tight muscles. It would be a much more telling contest
if all the parties were properly prepared for rigorous physical exertion.

With that the four women split into pairs, the Amazons engaging in a fast
drill to heat and stretch their muscles, the teachers indulging in some light
free sparring.

After ten minutes the Amazons ceased their exercising and opened their weapons
cases. Their own swords were of the modern Amazon pattern, with double-edged
blades evenly tapering to points, the cutting edges straight rather than curved,
and with finger-width fullers to lighten the weapons on both sides of the blades.
These were cut and thrust swords for use against foes who wore neither mail nor
plate armor. The lengths were tailored to the warriors’ statures; Sherice’s measuring
40” overall and Darla’s 36”. Each of them also drew an 18” long parrying dagger
to wield in their left hands. The four met in the center of the room.

"Our orders are explicit. We have been instructed to engage you in sparring
as a team, in the manner in which Xena and Gabrielle fought together against
opponents in ancient times, rather than holding team-based, round-robin, single
combats. It will probably be faster to have one contest rather than four anyway,” Sherice
told the teachers. "Will this be acceptable to you?”

"It’ll be fine with us,” Serena answered, the trace of a glint in her eyes.

"In that case, warriors to your marks,” Darla said as she and Sherice moved
to stand side by side, four paces away from the teachers. "We begin when the
coin falls.”

The Queen’s Second produced a large Eisenhower dollar and set it on her bent
index finger. At a nod from Gabriella she launched the coin high into the air
over her right shoulder with a flick of her thumb. It flew up behind her in an
arc, traveling back towards the doors, as Darla quickly gripped her sword. After
a three second flight it dropped to the floor with an easily audible ping and
the contest was on.

Like Serena and Gabriella, Darla and Sherice had trained together, but not
nearly so intensely or for nearly as long as the two teachers who’d had no one
else to practice with. Not only this, but over the years, Serena and Gabriella
had studied every fight chronicled by the Bard of Poteidaia that had involved
the soulmates. They had relived Xena and Gabrielle’s battles, practiced the warriors’ applications
of techniques, and emulated them in their practical fighting. As much as Secunda’s
scrolls, these exercises had formed their personal styles. The wonder of it was
that the two modern students could apply the methods of the Warrior Princess
and the Amazon Bard. Having had no other sparring partners, they didn’t even
realize what an achievement this was, but the two Amazons realized it immediately.

From the first clash, Darla and Sherice were on the defensive. They ramped
up their efforts and it did them no good. Each had won tournaments within their
tribe and both were considered excellent with the sword. In particular, the Queen’s
Champion was acknowledged as a master. But though they managed to defend against
the soulmates, they couldn’t anticipate them, couldn’t break their combined guard,
and couldn’t move to an effective attack. For three minutes they tried countering
methods that the tribe had developed during their 3,800 years of combat, and
all of it was for naught. They were unable to apply winning techniques and they
realized that their defeat would be only a matter of time. Sherice was about
to call it off when she noted the glances passing between the two teachers and
saw a flash in Serena’s eyes much like the glint she’d noted earlier. Sensing
something important pending, she held her peace.

Serena and Gabriella had been matching the Amazons blow for blow, fending
them off and pressuring them in increasing increments as the contest continued.
Now, at what they sensed was the three minute mark where a formal round would
end, they traded a glance and stopped holding back.

The whole philosophy of Serena and Gabriella’s fighting style shifted. With
startling suddenness the Amazons’ blows were no longer being met and parried;
defense and counterattack ceased as separate techniques and became a single response.
The two teachers, who had learned only from scrolls and had taught themselves
the fighting arts, showed that they had eclipsed all the training that the nation
could provide to its warriors. Now they sidestepped lunges and slashes while
their own attacks increased in both speed and directness. They checked their
thrusts and swings rather than inflict wounds, but they fought with the same
controlled savagery that Hope had once learned in preparation for her challenge.
They fought like the Warrior Princess and her Bard.

During the next thirty seconds, before the soulmates withdrew, Darla and
Sherice each saw their deaths a half-dozen times. Never in all their lives had
they been so obviously outclassed, and in her final move, Gabriella caught Darla’s
sword and dagger in the windows of her ventilated swords, and with twisting motions
of her forearms, wrenched them from the Amazon’s hands.

In the stillness after the sparring match ended there was only the sound
of breathing, fast and shallow in the Amazons, slower and more regular in the
teachers. There was an unavoidable effect from adrenalin when you saw a sword
stopping again and again only a fraction of an inch from slitting an artery or
impaling your body, while despite your best efforts, you had no chance of warding
it off. It was that very same desperation and hopelessness that thousands had
felt in the ancient world as they’d lost their lives in their failed confrontations
with the original Xena and Gabrielle.

Darla and Sherice wiped sweat from their brows and caught their breaths.
It was some minutes before anyone spoke. The results of the sparring were a shocking
revelation to all parties. In their expectations, the best the soulmates had
anticipated was a draw. In their expectations, the worst the Amazons had
anticipated was a draw. To be so clearly shown the dominance of their hosts was
a complete surprise. Finally Darla went to retrieve her weapons from where they’d
landed a short distance away. She knew that the queen would be very disturbed
by her next report.

After slipping back into her sweats and returning her sword to its case,
Sherice spoke to Serena and Gabriella. In the meantime, Darla had retreated to
a corner and was speaking on her cell phone.

"I think we can agree that your training regime has been effective and that
you’ve digested the teachings of Secunda,” the Queen’s Champion said, "and you
have my sincerest regards for your achievements. But there is something more
that I sensed as we matched swords. You have inherited the spirit of battle that
once lived in your distant ancestors. I, for one, believe that you are the descendants
of Xena and Gabrielle. I will also tell you that your abilities are beyond ours;
there is no one in the tribe that can match you. I’d expect the same results
if you were to fight singly.”

Serena and Gabriella found themselves speechless. Darla walked over to them.

"Gabriella, the queen would like to speak with you and your partner,” she
said, holding out her phone.

The blonde was petrified and squeaked out, "what do I say?”

The Amazons couldn’t help but laugh as Gabriella tucked her swords under
one arm and hesitantly took the phone. At first she held it at arm’s length like
a snake. The blonde could hear a voice on the other end calling out a greeting,
and as if in a daze, she raised the device to her ear.

"H-hello?” She choked out.

"Hello, Gabriella? I’m Renée, Queen of the Southern Tribe of the North American
Amazon Nation. My Second tells me that you and your partner have defeated them
in pairs sword sparring. Congratulations. I would like to invite you both to
meet with me and my advisors on the tribal lands. Can you two arrange to be away
from home for a week?” The queen sounded remarkably normal, with the calm confidence
of a powerful businesswoman or a successful professional. For some reason, Gabriella
was surprised that she didn’t speak archaic Greek.

The wide-eyed blonde turned to her soulmate and mouthed, she’s invited
us for a visit!

Serena pumped a fist in the air in an unabashed display of elation and then
did a series of silly dance steps before whooping, "Yes!”

"I take it you’ve decided to accept my invitation,” the queen said from the
phone. There was obvious humor in her voice and this had an immediate calming
effect on Gabriella.

"Yes, Queen Renée, Serena and I would be honored to meet you and your council
at your convenience.”

"In that case, accompany my Second and Champion on their flight. They will
be returning to the homeland in the morning. Rest well tonight and I’ll look
forward to meeting you tomorrow.”

"Th-thank you, your majesty,” Gabriella managed to say before the phone clicked
off. After handing it back to Darla she turned to Serena and said, "I guess we’re
flying to the Amazon lands with Darla and Sherice tomorrow morning.”

"Do we need to book flights on the plane?” Serena asked.

"No, we brought our own,” Darla told her, smiling, then offered, "would you
like to join us for dinner? It’s about the right time and personally, surviving
my death always gives me an appetite.”

6

The Gulfstream III came down at Alliance Airport and a Hummer was waiting
for the four women who deplaned. For the next two hours they rode through the
empty countryside of western Nebraska. Finally, after driving north for eighteen
miles down an unpaved road, they came to the entrance of the tribal compound,
passing the totem and the sentries’ trenches.

"Is all this land owned by the tribe?” Gabriella asked as she pressed her
face to the rear passenger side window.

"Everything since we left the paved road,” Darla told her, "but the compound
is on the western side of the property. The nation owns title to about 200 square
miles, roughly 50 miles east-west by 40 miles north-south. It’s been deeded as
the ‘Bucking A Ranch’ since 1852 when the nation offered the federal government
25 cents an acre and President Fillmore accepted. Ten years later the government
was charging settlers $1.25 an acre under the Homestead Act of 1862.”

"It’s also known that the nation has left most of the land undeveloped,” Sherice
added. "In fact, during the first decades the remaining Pawnee outnumbered us.
Both their tribe and ours were hunters, riders, and loved open lands, so eventually
we co-existed in peace. The Amazons were also anti-slavery and very glad to be
north of the partition of the 1853 Kansas-Nebraska Act. They had wars over slavery
in the Kansas Territory south of us, and the Indian Wars were still raging then
too, but there we were hosting Native Americans and escaped slaves…we still do.” She
chuckled.

Being African-American, the status of Nebraska as a free state was more than
a proud bit of history for Sherice. Her own ancestors had been accepted into
the tribe at that time, finding a sanctuary with the Amazons after generations
of forced servitude.

When the ride ended, Serena and Gabriella were ushered into the compound
and taken to a comfortable room. They were shown the cafeteria, the auditorium,
the gym, the library, the archery range, and the computer café. Eventually, after
a late lunch, they were brought to the queen’s study.

Queen Renée was seated at her table awaiting them, with Marieve and Shareen
to her left, and Darla and Sherice on her right. The teachers were greeted cordially
and offered seats facing the Amazons.

"The greetings and welcome of the Amazon Nation is extended to you both,” the
queen said, "and I’m glad you’ve come. You already know Darla, my second in command,
and Sherice, my champion. Here are Shareen, Master Lore Keeper of the Tribe,
and Marieve, our Tribal Shamaness. Oh yes, and I should also wish you a happy
Halloween.”

The shamaness greeted them with a warm smile, the lore keeper with a look
of curiosity. The two teachers smiled at them all, but their attention was focused
on the queen. It seemed she was only fractionally taller than Gabriella, with
much longer hair of the same pale blonde, and bright green eyes rather than Gabriella’s
somewhat bluer-green. She was calm and confident, at ease with the strangers,
and openly friendly.

"It’s been a very long time since the descendants of the Warrior Princess
and her bard sat among us. Hope’s line was lost to us after the 6th generation,
when no daughter was born to the last queen of her blood, and of Xena’s line,
only those who were allied warriors were known to us. From what our histories
tell us, the separation has lasted for about 1,750 years.”

"Our grandaunts spent years searching for evidence of Hope and Eve’s children,
but they never even found the stories that told of the ends of their lives,” Gabriella
said. "They would’ve been fascinated to learn what happened to Eve and Hope and
their families.”

"I’m sure they would have,” the queen said, "but at the time, we were too
worried about what they’d already discovered and what they might learn from it.
We had no idea that they were actually descendants of Xena and Gabrielle. At
least they kept most of their discoveries secret.” She sighed and shook her head;
the nation had missed an opportunity in not contacting the two professors years
before.

"Melinda once told me she’d been ‘advised’ not to say anythin’ that might
get her in trouble,” Serena commented, "an’ now I suspect I know just who told
her that.” At the questioning look from the queen, she added, "Xena’s spirit,
still protectin’ her soulmate’s people after all the centuries that had passed.”

"And now you two are this generation’s descendants of Xena and Gabrielle’s
bloodlines,” the queen said with a contemplative look in her eyes. She fell silent
for some moments, obviously thinking, and when she resumed, she startled all
those present. "You know that as a descendant of Gabrielle, and therefore of
Queen Hope, you are probably due the status of a princess of this tribe, Gabriella.”

The blonde teacher’s mouth hung open in shock while the other Amazons began
muttering and commenting to each other.

"I know, I know,” Queen Renée said, raising her hands to silence the others. "She
wouldn’t be of the direct matrilineal line from Hope, but she is still almost
certainly of her bloodline. It wouldn’t be the first time that a claim of royalty
had jumped a generation with a father in between.”

"There’s more to your belief, isn’t there, my Queen,” Marieve said, holding
her sovereign’s eye, "you have no children, no daughter as yet, and there is
no one else living who can lay a claim by blood.”

"Well, you can seek the truth of that and confirm or deny it, can’t you,
my Shamaness,” the queen replied with a slight smile.

The shamaness bowed her head to acknowledge her queen’s point. "I shall do
so if that is your wish, my Queen.”

"It is,” Renée said. "And it should be done soon, this afternoon, if possible.”

"By your command, my Queen,” the shamaness said. She then turned her attention
to Gabriella and asked, "Can you give me about a half-hour of your time following
this meeting?”

The blonde looked to her soulmate who gave her an almost imperceptible nod,
and then she answered ‘yes’. Things were moving so fast that she was well beyond
her center.

"Next,” the queen said, looking at Serena, "you have said that you‘ve never
seen any ghosts…would you like to?”

"Ya got ghosts here too?” The tall teacher blurted out in surprise.

"We have been visited by one for the last couple nights,” the queen told
her, "and she may prove to be familiar to you. It would be an interesting experience
for you to greet her. Would you accompany me tonight for a viewing? I doubt you’ll
be disappointed.”

"But of course, Queen Renée,” Serena said lightly, "wouldn’t miss it for
the world.”

"I’m not kidding,” the queen said with sudden intensity. "You may find yourself
confronting and communing with your ancestor and understanding your grandaunt
at last. I, for one, am looking forward to it.”

Serena nodded, sobered by the queen’s conviction. The initial meeting ended
shortly thereafter and Gabriella accompanied Marieve to a room as strange as
any she had ever seen. Esoteric tribal symbols had been smeared on the walls
with dark clotted pigments. Totems and weavings dangled from the ceiling or stood
on poles driven into the floor. There were a prodigious number of skulls and
other bones, as well as decorated hides and pelts. The shamaness had filled the
space with the paraphernalia of her office and a vast collection of historical
bric-a-brac from earlier tribal spiritualists. Gabriella noted a fair number
of Native American artifacts mixed in. Her grandaunt would have had a field day
with it.

"Have a seat right here,” Marieve told her, gesturing to a bison skin with
the head still attached, "and I’ll be with you in a moment.” As she strode off
across the room she added, "And please don’t touch anything.” She sounded like
a dentist or a family doctor.

Gabriella shrugged and sat down. The rug, as she thought of it, seemed warm
beneath her, and when she ran her fingers through the fur it felt surprisingly
soft.

After a few minutes of rummaging around in a wardrobe, the shamaness returned
in a tunic and leggings of buckskin, with a rattling pectoral of miscellaneous
bones, and a baggy headdress featuring deer antlers. She had also painted dark
circles under her eyes and thunderhead spirals on her cheeks. Gabriella sucked
in her breath when she first beheld Marieve’s appearance and the shamaness chuckled.

"It’s traditional to dress for the rituals,” she said, as she lit several
candles and ignited a bundle of sage. She waved the pungent smoke over the two
of them and then crushed it out in a dish chipped from a stone. "Ahhh, that’s
better,” she said, before commanding Gabriella to, "close your eyes and relax.”

The blonde closed her eyes as requested and began a meditation, clearing
her mind and concentrating on her breathing. In short order her surroundings
faded and she centered her consciousness in tranquility.

Almost immediately she was presented with the image of Marieve, in a much
more elaborate costume, chanting and dancing in a disjointed manner to the rhythm
of a drum. The drummer was invisible and the surroundings blended into an all-encompassing
darkness. She regarded the proceedings with curiosity. The shamaness was clutching
a gourd rattle, topped with a dried bird’s head, and embellished with the fowl’s
desiccated wings and feet dangling on the ends of thongs.

She shook the rattle at Gabriella and asked, "Who are you?”

From the darkness all around, voices whispered, but she couldn’t make out
the words.

"Whooo are you?”

The whispering became louder but no more distinct. The blonde thought it
was like being in a crowd of foreigners with a cacophony of voices making no
sense. It caused a throbbing to start in her head.

"Whoooooo are you?”

Geeeze, she thought, haven’t they given her an answer by now? The
throbbing was graduating into a full fledged headache, with every pulse of her
heart transformed into a throbbing behind her eyes. She found the drum annoying
and the scent of sage oppressive in her nostrils.

"Whooooooooo are you?”

Oh for cryin’ out loud! I’m Gabriella, same as I’ve always been, now g’wan
and leave me alone. This headache’s killing me. Arrrrgh! The voices were
no longer whispering; some spoke urgently and others actually cried out. The
pounding in her head brought flashes of light to the backs of the blonde’s eyes
with each heartbeat. The motions of Marieve’s body as she did her hurdy-gurdy
dance were beginning to make her sick.

"Whooooooooooo are you?”

And that’s it! I am so out of here! In her mind’s eye she started
to rise to her feet, but she was unsteady, as if the rising voices around her
were washing against her like ocean waves rushing against a shore. Partway up
she lost her balance and found herself sprawled back on the bison skin, but with
her vision wavering as if distorted by heat waves, undulating in synch with the
rise and fall of the disembodied voices. Her head was pounding so hard she thought
it would knock loose any earwax still in her skull. She felt nauseous. Oh
my god, I’ve got to get out of here…somebody make it stop!

In response to her plea two figures shimmered into existence, standing protectively
in front of her. Each was about her own height, blonde and solid. One bore paired
short swords with black, ventilated blades and wore an Amazon warrior’s leathers.
The other wore the leathers of a queen and bore a single broadsword. They stood
confronting the darkness and the voices fell silent before their glares. Only
the figure of Marieve remained. She stilled her dance, then dropped to one knee
before the two women and lowered her head.

"Who is she, spirit warriors?” The shamaness asked in a normal tone of voice.

"Across all the years she is our daughter. We claim her in blood,” the two
said clearly.

"You shall do her a queen’s honor,” the spirit queen said.

Then their figures began to waver and vanish. The darkness faded and the
room came back into view. Gabriella found herself sprawled on the bison skin
and struggled to sit upright again. Her head was clearing with her vision and
the headache abated. She took a deep breath and looked around.

"Your pardon, my Princess,” Marieve said, capturing Gabriella’s attention.
She was still on one knee, just as she had been in the vision.

"Uhhh, of course,” the blonde said, still a little disoriented, "that was…um,
wow.”

The shamaness chuckled as she rose to her feet.

"Let me just get out of this stuff and we’ll go find your soulmate and the
queen. It seems her highness was right. I guess we’ve got some news to give them,
huh?”

At the evening meal in the cafeteria, Serena and Gabriella joined the officers
of the tribe at the head table, and before the meal began, Sherice rang the gong
and Queen Renée rose to make an announcement.

"Sisters…fellow members of the tribe; this Halloween we have a great cause
for celebration. The complete story will be told to you very soon, but it has
not yet reached its conclusion. Therefore for now, I will only tell you that
a new princess has been discovered. With us tonight are Gabriella Covington and
Serena Pappas, the living descendants of Gabrielle, mother of Queen Hope, and
her soulmate, Xena, the Warrior Princess and Destroyer of Nations. After decades
of uncertainty, providence has led us to Princess Gabriella. Welcome her and
her soulmate.” Renée gestured the two to their feet and they stood up, feeling
incredibly self-conscious.

The queen’s announcement was first greeted with shocked silence, but this
quickly gave way to cheers and shouts of excitement. Every eye in the cavernous
room trained on the strangers standing at the queen’s table. The gasps didn’t
stop there either, for the two newcomers looked identical to the actresses who
had played Xena and Gabrielle on the popular TV show. It was a multiple shock
and an unexpected treat for the holiday.

When the noise had settled to a dull roar of excited voices, Serena and Gabriella
reclaimed their seats and the queen leaned over to speak with the soulmates.

"I don’t know about you, but I believe I’ll dine privately tonight rather
than throw myself on the gossip lines,” she indicated the serving lines with
a nod. The two teachers agreed wholeheartedly. If they set foot beyond the protection
of the queen’s table they would be mobbed. Of course it would happen sooner or
later, but if a little time passed after the surprise of the initial announcement
it might be somewhat tamer.

"What do you suggest, Queen Renée?” Gabriella asked. She was, as ever, hungry
when assailed by the scents of food and the sight of people eating.

"I would like us to take a half-hour or so for a viewing and then retire
to dine in my chambers,” she answered. "Perhaps Marieve and Shareen will accompany
us.”

The shamaness and the lore keeper nodded; the shamaness with regret to be
missing a meal, the lore keeper with relief to be escaping the crowd. Besides,
the queen’s suggestion was not really a request.

"I would like to join this ‘viewing’ if I may, my Queen,” Darla requested.

"As would I, my Queen,” Sherice added. It was the same as in many of the
past years.

Renée looked at them a moment and then acquiesced with a shrug. "May as well
have a couple more witnesses; I would hate to think of a dispute arising in our
tribe if something should happen tonight.”

"My Queen, if the import of tonight’s viewing is to be as great as I suspect,
then no count of witnesses will suffice to dispel all possible doubts. Still,
you are our queen,” Marieve said cryptically. The others stared at her a moment
but Renée only chuckled.

The early Halloween night was dark and chilly, but at least it wasn’t raining.
The royal party made its way from the compound and quietly walked down a path
to the forward sentry trench, finding two familiar young warriors on guard duty
there. Trista stared back and forth between Gabriella and Queen Renée as if not
believing her eyes. Kalica stared mostly at Serena and gulped as she felt her
pulse speed up.

"This is not an inspection,” the queen reassured the two nervous guards. "Has
there been a sighting yet tonight?”

"No, my Queen, not yet,” Kalica answered crisply. She returned to viewing
the road through her bow sight, trying hard to keep her concentration on her
duty and not on her guests.

"We shall wait a while,” the queen declared. She turned to Serena and said, "I
hope you have patience and that we will have some luck.” She sat on the edge
of the trench and gave her attention to the road.

Soon the others lapsed into silence, all watching the packed dirt track 100
feet away. Time seemed to fade, its import lost in the dark of night lit only
by the watching moon and the constant and ancient stars. How like the skies so
many others had sat beneath and wondered at through all the ages of mankind,
the view similar to that seen from the walls of cities long ground to dust, or
from seats around campfires in lands lost to history. With the fading of place
and self they felt a communion with souls who had lived long before and the souls
of those yet unborn. Absent the concerns of daylight, a person became only a
person, more like to those of any other nation or era than not. Overhead the
stars followed their wheeling path as the world spun beneath them and inched
towards the coming dawn. In the darkness the spirits of those who waited were
timeless, alone, and yet connected to the continuum of the whole of humanity.

Queen Renée sighed softly. For her this was a rare moment of peace. How might
it have been in ancient times, she wondered, as she so often did; how different
was the condition of the tribe? Being unhampered with the concerns imposed by
modern society, did the sisters back then have more time to enjoy the natural
world of which they were more closely a part? Were they more comfortable with
themselves and their place in that world? Did they more highly value and more
jealously guard their hearts…did they feel more strongly their loves? Blessed
with nights such as this, with the beauty of the sky and the land, how could
it not?

"On the road, one advancing on horseback at 10 o’clock,” Trista whispered
as she sighted the apparition through her bow sight.

Every eye swung in that direction. The guards held fast, none bothering to
reach for an arrow. In silence they watched as the ghostly rider moved forward
toward the totem.

"Come with me,” Queen Renée said to Serena. At the protests forming on the
lips of her second and her champion, she ordered, "the rest of you stay here.”

Though they looked like they wanted to protest, the two remained grudgingly
silent. With a quick glance to reassure Gabriella, Serena rose and followed the
queen down the trench. They came to its end and rose to ground level, moving
in plain view towards the road. Ahead of them, they could see the Ghost Warrior
riding at her slow walking pace towards them. Neither of them spoke.

When Renée and Serena reached the road they stopped and stood waiting for
the rider. The Ghost Warrior swept her head around to look at them, meeting each
of their eyes and nodding to the queen. They heard the dull clip-clop of the
horse’s hooves on the packed earth of the road, and the creaking of the saddle
as the rider shifted her weight. This time she did not disappear upon reaching
the totem, but nodded briefly to acknowledge it and then continued past. Closer
and closer she came and the queen greeted her with a smile.

Moments later she stopped her horse in front of the two figures with a soft, Whoa,
Argo. Then from the saddle she looked down, greeting Serena with a quick
bowing of her head and returning the queen’s smile with a nod.

My Queen, it has been a very long time, the Ghost Warrior said as
she swung her leg over the saddle and dismounted. Her boots made a dull thud
and raised a small puff of dust.

She stood before Renée, seemingly as solid and real as Serena herself. Serena
watched her carefully, not sure what to expect. The whole situation was too incredible.
Then the ghost turned to face her and came to attention.

Strategos, I request your leave, for I have completed my mission. She
bowed her head and waited for an answer.

For her part, Serena Pappas had no idea how to respond. She only knew that
it was very important. Then, as she stood silent and unsure, she felt a soft
voice in her head requesting that she let go. That voice resonated inside her
being, as familiar as any she had ever heard, and heralding a warmth of heart
closer than any save her soulmate. She willingly renounced her place in time
and welcomed the voice into her soul.

In the next moment, Serena felt as if she could do anything; not only what
she’d studied and practiced, but things no one had ever tried to do before. She
was confident, more so than any living woman, for she felt the certainty of a
god’s Favorite. A detached part of her wondered if this was how her grandaunt
had once felt. It was exhilarating! And then she heard her ancestor’s voice speak
through her own mouth.

Secunda, you are free to follow your heart from this day forth. I release
you from future service, for your past service and dedication deserve the highest
commendation. Your sacrifice long ago has achieved this future; you have conquered,
warrior. You are free to find your soulmate at last.

The dark head came up, its bearing proud as she stared eye to eye with one
of only two other beings she had considered ‘near self’. Her Strategos Hypatos,
her very creator, had released her from service. For the first time in the Destroyer
of Nation’s presence, the cloned ‘special’ allowed herself to show an emotion
other than calm focus or battle fury. A single tear overflowed and made its way
down her sculpted cheek. A look passed between them that acknowledged their new
status; peers; equals at last. Then Secunda turned to the Amazon Queen and offered
her hand.

100 feet away in the trench, Sherice and Darla surged up over the wall and
made for the road at a dead run. They could cover that distance in seconds, but
somehow tonight it wasn’t fast enough. To Serena Pappas it seemed as if the world
slowed its pace; the charging warriors edged forward in the increments of a slow
motion movie. Before her a timeless tableau unfolded in its own time, and it
would not be disturbed by the living. It was the culmination of fates too long
denied.

Queen Renée reached up and laid her hand in that of the Ghost Warrior. She
smiled.

"I have returned many times in many lives, my Champion, but never before
has there been one to release you and never have we been free to join.”

"I have sought you in every year since your passing, my Queen, yet never
before have I been able to offer you my hand and my heart forever.”

"Forever…you see, you do have a soul and a heart and a fate.”

"And none were more surprised than me when the world faded away after death
and my consciousness remained,” Secunda said.

"I have waited for you.”

"And at last I have found you. Ride with me now?”

"That has been my dream during so many lifetimes, just as it was when we
first met. At last we shall be together forever.”

Secunda swung up into the saddle and reached down, offering her hand again
to the queen. Renée took it and let herself be pulled up behind her beloved champion.
She settled and wrapped her arms tightly around her soulmate. At last, fate was
sweet.

Secunda met Serena’s eyes and nodded her farewell, a smile on her face. She
wheeled the warhorse and nudged her flanks. As Argo gathered herself to charge
away, Serena noted that the figures had taken on a translucent quality and that
no sound came from the palomino’s hooves as they struck the dirt. Within a stride
the horse and riders completely disappeared. Inside Serena Pappas, the presence
of Xena’s spirit lingered in the world yet a little while longer.

In the next moment a furious Darla and Sherice lunged into the space where
the Ghost Warrior and the queen had been. Sherice grasped Serena’s shoulder and
spun her around.

"What have you done!” She yelled. "Where’s the Queen?”

In the teacher’s eyes an ancient darkness flared. It blossomed in the feral
sneer that shaped her lips. She wrenched herself free of Sherice’s grasp and
caught the champion’s hand, twisting her wrist and immobilizing her. Then she
applied pressure and forced the larger woman to her knees.

"She is gone as she had meant to go this night; as she was meant to
go for the last 20 centuries,” the icy voice coming from Serena Pappas’ mouth
grated out. It was filled with steel and remorse, and grim self-loathing. "It
has been my failing, my deficiency as strategos that has
forced a noble and steadfast warrior to suffer for all that time alone.” Her
eyes bored into those of the Queen’s Champion with an inhuman intensity that
chilled the other woman’s blood; War God’s ancient Favorite…Destroyer of Nations! "I owed
her more and I should have known it a long, long time ago.”

"Our queen has found her soulmate at last, Sherice,” Marieve said as she
hastened to join them on the road. She canted her head to Serena and requested, "Release
the Queen’s Champion, Destroyer of Nations; she is not at fault here.”

After a moment Sherice’s hand was abruptly released and she massaged the
joint to diminish the pain as she warily rose to her feet.

"All is finally as it should be, Destroyer of Nations, and if it took longer
than many would desire, still it is right and it is done at last. You have done
what was necessary,” the shamaness said. Her words seemed to sooth the rigid
figure of the Hellene’s Bane and bit by bit Serena’s body relaxed. Soon it was
the teacher who stood breathing heavily, there on the dirt road leading to the
tribal lands. "Go back to the spirit world, Destroyer of Nations,” Marieve said
softly, "your war too is won.”

7

November 1st dawned clear and frigid; a cold front had moved in
overnight dropping temperatures into the low 30s. After a series of announcements
the previous night, the nation had been informed of the investiture of the new
princess and the abdication of the queen. In a swift move, the local council
approved an order of succession and the princess became queen designate. Upon
ratification of an Oath of Fealty by the full membership of the nation, Gabriella
would take the Queen’s Mask in an official ceremony. Among the papers found late
that night which made the whole process smoother was a note from Queen Renée,
passing on her Right of Caste to Gabriella Covington. Even were she not accepted
as a princess, she would be accepted as the queen’s chosen successor.

It would be strange at first, an outsider as queen of the nation, but at
least this stranger was steeped in the ancient Amazon ways. Perhaps her rule
would inaugurate a return to some of the more traditional aspects of their society.
Perhaps the next phase of the Amazon cultural renaissance was at hand. Though
who would serve her as Queen’s Second was undecided, one thing seemed certain.
No doubt the new queen would name her soulmate Serena Pappas as her Queen’s Champion.
After all, what Amazon queen wouldn’t want a Xena of her own? In one respect
Gabriella was already proving herself different from the previous leader. Unlike
Queen Renée who had always risen alone and with the dawn, it was now already
1340 hours and Gabriella and her soulmate were still asleep.

"Many wondered why a woman as attractive as Queen Renée never bound her heart
to anyone,” Marieve said to the gathering in the queen’s study that same afternoon. "She
had said many times that she was married to her office, but I know that deep
down, she always longed for someone with whom her soul sang in harmony. She said
as much more than once.” The others, Sherice and Darla in particular, nodded
in agreement.

"We also recall her trips to the road on Halloween,” Darla said. "It had
been going on for years, every time a sighting of the Ghost Warrior was reported…almost
like a crush.”

"As a girl she used to ask me for that story,” Shareen said, "and it was
always her favorite. I suppose she’d found a connection in it even then; something
deep that spoke to her heart.”

"Do you think you’ll be able to speak with her again,” Sherice asked the
shamaness, "do you think you’ll be able to meet her in the spirit realm?”

Marieve looked over at the Queen’s Champion in surprise, knowing how uncomfortable
the tall warrior was with the supernatural. Then again, perhaps with her impending
release from the duties of Queen’s Champion, the ex-Marine was already longing
for the "good old days”.

"Perhaps I shall try,” the shamaness said with the hint of a grin, "after
her honeymoon.”

"Oh yes, and then we shall all get to have the chance to kid her,” Darla
said, a smile breaking out on her face, "and I shall certainly relish the opportunity.
Yes indeed, the paybacks shall be many.”

97 BC Xena is born in Amphipolis, on the border of Thrace and Macedonia.

90 BC Callisto is born in Cirra, on the north coast of the Gulf of
Corinth, near Delphi, in Phocis.

89 BC Gabrielle is born in Poteidaia, at the narrows of the neck of
Pallene, the western-most peninsula of Chalcidice.

80 BC The warlord Cortese's army attacks Amphipolis. After their defeat,
Xena is driven from her home, estranged from her mother, and blamed for the death
of her brother. She begins a two-year apprenticeship under Mithridates VI, the
King of Pontus.

78 BC Xena takes command of an outlaw army, having deposed their leader,
and transforms them into a pirate force. She sacks Cirra and many other coastal
towns on her way towards Corinth, where she is forced to withdraw after a protracted
stalemate.

77-73 BC Xena encounters Caesar for the first time, holding him hostage
during the sack of Thasos. The Roman navy rescues him and Xena rues the decision
to stay her hand and not execute him when she had the chance. Caesar defeats
Xena's pirates. They become enemies for life. With her forces in shambles, she
accepts patronage from the God of War, becoming known as the Favorite of Ares.
She travels through the eastern steppes, as far as Chin, regrouping and forging
a new army. During this period, Xena is first called the Destroyer of Nations.
For another three years she leads her growing forces in mayhem, eventually becoming
such a threat that she is finally defeated by an uneasy coalition of Athenians,
Corinthians, and Greek and Roman mercenaries.

The Early Years (72-70 BC)

(These 3 years were Gabrielle's most
active as a writer.)

"Sins of the Past" (72 BC) The meeting of soulmates, Xena
is 25 and had already been a warrior for over 7 years, the last 5 as a warlord
commander. It had been about a month since she'd left her defeated army when
she rescued Gabrielle, who had barely turned 17. She was ignorant, idealistic,
but also loyal, feisty, and most surprisingly, literate. Within a year, Xena
teaches her the nerve pinch and basic staff fighting techniques. (Note that the
word "Sins” in the title reflects the Christian ethos of the modern translators.
Gabrielle’s clone stressed that the ancient Greek word she’d used could be more
accurately translated as "Dark Deeds”. It was a vernacular expression, where "dark” was
synonymous with "bloody” or "violent”, and didn’t carry the implied moral judgment
or condemnation of the word "sins”. This relates to the bard’s presentation of
Xena’s past history as a warrior, from the attack of Cortese to their meeting
outside Poteidaia.)

"Chariots of War" (72 BC) Xena and Gabrielle assist a Thracian
settlement in repelling a warlord's army. To break the siege of the settlement,
Xena resorts to coating hogs and cattle with pitch and bundled straw, and then
stampeding the livestock into the enemy lines after setting them afire. These
flaming "chariots" introduced the bard to the horrific necessities
of war, and the understanding that her soulmate would do whatever was required
to save the settlers. It was her first real introduction to being forced to choose
the lesser of two evils, a demand they jokingly came to refer to as the "Greater
Good". Gabrielle notes that the battle was followed by a victory feast of
BBQ’d pork and beef.

"The Reckoning"

"The Greater Good" (72 BC) The soulmates deprive the warlord
Talmadeus' army of supplies with a plan to demonstrate a farming village's resolve
with a controlled crop burn. The army was threatening the city of Abdera, but
without food, the army would fall apart. Somehow the burn got out of control
and destroyed all the crops. The army disbanded, the city was saved, and the
farmers starved. The Greater Good was served. The episode, "The Greater Good”,
made from this scroll was almost unrecognizable.

"Callisto's Predations" (71 BC) This scroll became two episodes, "Callisto" and "Return
of Callisto". It should be noted that Perdicus was Gabrielle's cousin,
NOT her husband, and that at Gabrielle's urging, Xena spared Callisto's life
an unprecedented second time. Callisto was tried and imprisoned for 20 years
on Shark Island.

"Is There A Physician in the Stockade?" This scroll was originally
a manual of Xena's battlefield medical techniques, and was written during the
Mitoan-Thessalian Conflict. Sections detail first aid, triage, surgery, bone
setting, and herbology. In addition to giving rise to the episode, "Is
There A Doctor In The House?", this scroll includes an anecdotal story
that became the core of the episode, "In Sickness and In Hell”. Note that
there was no word for "doctor” in ancient Greek. Healer, physician, and butcher
were the applicable contemporary terms.

"Hooves and Harlots" (70 BC) Note that the actual scroll
was as much a history of the Amazon and Centaur cultures as a chronicle of a
dispute with a neighboring warlord. It was during this dispute that Xena's son,
Solon, (age 5), was actually killed. We are given a rare account of the rage
of the Destroyer of Nations. Elements of this history appear as background in
several TV episodes, including, "Hooves and Harlots", "Adventures
in the Sin Trade 1 & 2", "Lifeblood", and "Orphan
of War". For her defense of a wounded Princess Terreis, Gabrielle is
made an honorary friend of the Amazons.

"When In Rome" This scroll tells of the origins of the struggle
between Julius Caesar and the Warrior Princess. Julius Caesar's ransom and defeat
of Xena's pirate army is included as background, while her revenge, achieved
by freeing Vercinix and arranging the execution of Crassus, is presented as current.
It gave rise to the episodes, "Destiny", "The Quest",
and "When In Rome". (Note that some scholars believe Xena's
actions were aimed at avenging the death of the rebellious gladiatorial slave,
Spartacus, a fellow Thracian, who died at Crassus' hand in 71 BC. This goal is
as valid as that of freeing Vercinix or destabilizing the Roman leadership by
breaking the First Triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus.)

Xena and Gabrielle's first trip to
Chin (70-69 BC)

(Over a year of traveling, the trip was,
in part, a measure of expedience, putting the soulmates beyond the reach of Julius
Caesar and the vengeful Romans.)

"The Kingdom of Lao" (70-69 BC) This scroll became the episodes, "The
Debt 1 &2". Xena assassinates Ming Tsu to honor an old alliance,
securing the rule of the House of Lao. Gabrielle first uses the Sai in battle
and they become one of her favorite weapons.

"Bad Rye" (69 BC) This scroll was greatly dramatized and
became "The Furies". Xena and Gabrielle had been back in Greece
for barely 2 moons, and Xena was still suffering debilitation from ergotism,
when they were recalled to Chin. (Ergot poisoning, caused by a fungus growing
on rye because of wet weather, was relatively common in their time).

Xena and Gabrielle's second trip to
Chin (68 BC)

(Most of 1 year traveling)

"The Dragon and the Phoenix" (68 BC) This scroll gave rise
to the episodes, "Purity", and "Back in the Bottle".
Recalled to Chin, Xena captures Ming Tsu's son, Ming Tien, the "Green Dragon",
(age 22), and turns him over to the Laos, who execute him for breaking the peace
with his black powder army. The restored peace of Chin is the reborn "Phoenix".

"Giant Killer" (68 BC) Written on the road, this scroll begins
with a short history of giants, during which Gabrielle recounts a legend that
became the episode, "Giant Killer", and continues with an adventure
that became "A Day in the Life". It probably also inspired the
anecdotal scene with Gabrielle and the blind cyclops that was inserted into the
episode, "Sins of the Past".

The Birth of Eve (12th moon,
68 BC)

(Xena is 29 and Gabrielle is 21)

"The Blood Shamaness" (late 68 BC) Immediately follows the
soulmates' return from Chin. This scroll tells of Alti's reappearance after 8
years, again threatening the Amazon Nation. Still obsessed with forcing Xena
to assist in her plans for destroying the Amazons, she attempted to steal Eve's
soul during Xena's pregnancy. The episode, "Them Bones, Them Bones" was
based on this scroll. It was left to Gabrielle to actually defeat Alti, after
Queen Melosa was mortally poisoned by the renegade, Valesca. At this time, Gabrielle
was named a full sister and Amazon Warrior, by the newly crowned Queen Terreis.

"The Dirty Half Dozen" (67 BC)

"Forgiven"

"In Sickness and In Hell" (66 BC) Gabrielle writes of the
plagues and diseases the soulmates had encountered during their travels. Among
these we can recognize malaria, yellow fever, small pox, dysentery, leprosy,
influenza, bubonic plague, tin and lead poisoning, acromegaly, chrondistrophic
dwarfism, Siamese and parasite twinning, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, typhus, cholera,
and several types of food poisoning. Note that the title of this scroll was borrowed
for the title of an episode based on content from the scroll, "Is There
A Physician In The Stockade?"

"Past Imperfect" (66 BC)

Xena and Gabrielle's trip to Indus
(65-63 BC)

(Over 2 years, during which Carthage
falls to a plague, probably Yersinia pestis)

"Paradise Found" (65 BC) Gabrielle and Xena learn yoga techniques
and a new system of pressure point attacks from the Tibetan mystic and holy man,
Ai-den. The techniques compliment the famous "nerve pinch" that Xena
had learned years before in Chin. It is believed that these methods predate and
predict the later Chinese system of fighting called the "Poison Hand".

"Karma" (64 BC) The events of this scroll, actually a travelogue
of the journey to Indus and a record of the philosophies they encountered, became,
after great embellishment, the episodes "Devi", and "Between
the Lines". Xena and Gabrielle meet Eli and again defeat Alti, this
time in spirit form.

"The Way" (64-63 BC) Xena is purified by her acceptance of
the Way of the Warrior, under the guidance of a spiritual teacher in Indus. It
is during their return to Greece that she is able to take possession of the Chakram
of Light and combine it with the Chakram of Darkness. This material, much modified,
is the basis for the episodes, "The Way", and "Chakram".

The Middle Years (63-58 BC)

(5 years of relative peace that began
in war end in tragedy)

"The Best Day" (Summer Solstice, 63 BC) This scroll includes
the material that became both "A Good Day" and "Amphipolis
Under Siege". Xena engineers the destruction of Caesar and Pompey's
eastern armies outside of Amphipolis. The combined Roman casualties are estimated
at over 40,000. Xena had returned home with Gabrielle and 4 ½ year old
Eve, hoping for a semi-retirement in which to raise her daughter.

"The Play's the Thing" A self-deprecatory piece by Gabrielle,
telling of the fiasco arising from her attempt at theater production.

"Crusader" (61-60 BC ?) This scroll tells of the warrior,
Najara, seducer of the Roman Governor of Pergamum. She had so bewitched the weak
willed governor with her ambition and delusions of supernatural invincibility,
that he had begun the secession of Pergamum from the Roman Empire. Her crusade
was to supplant the Roman pantheon through forced conversion, and create an empire
dedicated to an ancient and bloodthirsty monotheistic faith, the worship of Ba'al.
It was her use of captured Greek sailors, (fishermen and traders from Thracian
coastal villages in particular), as human sacrifices, which prompted the soulmates
to become involved. Staying ahead of soldiers dispatched by Pompey the Magnus
to depose the governor, Xena and Gabrielle track down and battle Najara. After
finally dealing Najara an incapacitating wound, the soulmates left her in local
custody for the arriving legions. Charged with sedition, piracy, and heresy,
Najara was executed for her crimes following her trial and conviction by a Roman
court in early 59 BC.

The Birth of Hope (10th moon,
60 BC)

(Gabrielle is 29 and Hope was not the
rape-spawn of a demon or evil god)

"Lifeblood" (60 BC) Xena and Gabrielle return to the Amazon
Village for the birth and christening of Gabrielle's daughter, Hope, who receives
her Right of Caste. They find that Queen Ephiny had succeeded Queen Terreis in
62 BC.

"Succession" (59 BC) Xena and Gabrielle confront and kill
Mavican, Callisto's would-be successor, sparring partner, and disciple, who had
escaped from Shark Island in 60 BC after studying there under the "Warrior
Queen" for 10 years. It should be noted that for several years, Gabrielle
had been as deadly a fighter as Xena, and inflicted Mavican's fatal wound with
her sai.

Caesar's Kidnapping of Eve (58 BC)

(Xena is 39 and Gabrielle is 30)

"Endgame" (Vernal Equinox, 58 BC) This scroll tells of Caesar's
revenge. On his orders, Brutus attacks the Amazons, knowing Pompey is nearby.
Queen Ephiny is killed, and Eve, (age 9), is kidnapped. In the power gulf, Xena
takes temporary command of the Amazon army, slaughters Pompey's legions, and
personally beheads him, believing that he, not Caesar, was responsible for Eve's
abduction. At the same time, Gabrielle leads a war party to recover Ephiny's
body and rescue Amazons taken prisoner by Brutus. She was almost successful in
killing Brutus as well, a lost opportunity the soulmates would be thankful for
years later on the Ides of March. Only weeks later, Caesar sends a gloating message
explaining how Brutus' troops had dressed in Pompey's uniforms for the kidnapping,
and that Xena's rage had removed his greatest rival for power in Rome.

The Bloody Years (58-47 BC)

(Most of these 12 years were spent trying
to free Eve from Caesar)

It is during this time that Gabrielle trades her sais for a pair of Amazon
short swords, the blades of which she has lightened by "ventilation",
removing windows of metal to leave the blades "skeletonized". The resulting
whistle when slicing through the air becomes a fearsome trademark of the "Amazon
Bard".

"One Against an Army" (58-47 BC) Xena declares war on the
Roman Empire with the objective of recovering her daughter from Caesar. Although
this scroll contains the story of Xena's defense of a high pass, that battle
was only one of many, fought over a dozen years, against the Roman army, not
the Persians. Over the years, Xena was credited with causing destruction equivalent
to over five Roman legions in Greece, two in Italia, one in Gallia, and one in
Germania; including auxiliaries and mercenaries, a total of over 86,000 soldiers.
This includes the Roman casualties of "Endgame", but not those of "The
Best Day”. (The Battle of Thermopylae was fought in 480 BC, over 400 years
before Xena's time).

"Queen Marga" (58 BC) Documents the short reign of the Amazon
Queen Marga, and provided material that became "Coming Home" and "Dangerous
Prey". Note that Prince Morloch was the leader of the hostile army,
while Ares and the Erinyes never appear.

"Queen Varia" (57-54 BC and 46 BC) Documents the beginning
of the reign of the hotheaded Amazon Queen Varia, and the 3-year war against
Helicon. It provides material that became, "To Helicon and Back", as
well as relating Varia's later "Oath of Blood", the Amazon Nation's
vendetta against Livia, that served as the background for the episode, "Path
of Vengeance", which occurred after the rescue of Eve.

*Note 1: (52 BC) Callisto escapes from Shark Island Penal Colony
and temporarily disappears. At some point after this time, it is
suspected that Callisto made her way to Asia Minor and took possession of the
Chakram of Night, which she used in her attack on Xena in Rome. This weapon turned
up millennia later in Ares' tomb and was seen there by Janice Covington and Melinda
Pappas. It was the rumor of Callisto in Rome that had brought Xena and Gabrielle
out of semi-retirement for their last adventure).

"The Abyss" (48 BC) The events of this scroll were probably
also dramatized to become "The Price" and "Daughter
of Pomira", as well as the episode, "The Abyss".

The Rescue of Eve (46 BC)

(Xena is 51, Gabrielle is 43, and Eve
is 21)

"The Eternal City" (46 BC) Regarded by scholars as the continuation
and culmination of the scroll, "One Against An Army", it contains the
story of the rescue of Eve, now known as Livia. To free her, the soulmates infiltrated
Caesar's Palace in Rome and arranged the decimation of three cohorts of Praetorians
within the city. Xena and Gabrielle spent almost all of their remaining lives
on the run, undoing Caesar's influence on Xena's daughter. By this time, Xena
had been named First Enemy of the Imperium, with the price on her head growing
to 6 million denarii.

"The Ides of March" (44 BC) Begun by Gabrielle in a Roman
prison, and completed by an unknown author after the crucifixion. Xena was 53,
Gabrielle was 45, Callisto was 46, and Caesar was 56, on the Ides of March, 44
BC. Xena and Gabrielle were executed on the same day as the assassination of
their archenemy Gaius Julius Caesar. The unknown author attempts to claim that
they all died within moments of each other, in different parts of the city of
Rome. Only Callisto survived, and her fate is not recorded.

*Note 2: Eve and Hope both survived their mothers'
deaths. Eve lived in Amphipolis while not on the road continuing Xena and Gabrielle's
work. In 39 BC she was able to avenge herself by killing Brutus. She became a
well-known warrior and hero, hunted by Rome, until she was granted amnesty and
banished from Italia by Augustus Caesar, in 27 BC. In return, she foreswore carrying
on her mother's war against the Empire. The agreement was one of mutual convenience,
as she was 40 and had two children by that time, and Augustus was in the process
of securing his rule. Unlike Xena, Eve lived to retire and raise her family at
her grandmother's inn. Eve and Hope were never more than acquaintances, as Hope
was only 2 when Eve was kidnapped, and 14 when she was freed. By that time, Livia/Eve
was regarded as an enemy of the Amazon Nation. Hope exceeded Gabrielle's status
as an Amazon Warrior, while living fulltime with her tribe. At the age of 18,
she earned the grade of Master Warrior, upon achieving her 25th kill
in battle. At the age of 19, Hope became War Queen of the Greek Amazons, following
her challenge and defeat of Queen Varia on the summer solstice in 40 BC. Using
that position to honor the relationship between her own mother and Eve's, she
declined to prosecute Varia's "Oath of Blood", and the Nation's vendetta
against Livia/Eve was laid to rest. Almost nothing further is known about her.

*Note 3: Deadly Xena and Gabrielle were both hunted
by Rome, but because of the personal enmity between Xena and Caesar, it was always
the Warrior Princess for whom the Empire reserved its greatest hatred. Over the
years, (with Gabrielle’s help), Xena was involved in the deaths of something
in the neighborhood of 156,000 enemy troops, 40,000 in "The Best Day”, 86,000
during "One Against an Army”, and 30,000 in Chin, primarily in "The
Dragon and the Phoenix”. Figures on deaths during her years as a warlord are
sketchy, however best estimates place the total at something in the neighborhood
of 12,000 to 15,000. A conservative total would count 170,000 dead over the course
of her career. For purposes of comparison, Hannibal Barca is credited with the
destruction of about 85,000 legionnaires and allies in three major battles, (Trebbia
River, Lake Trasimeno, and the Plain of Cannae), within three years. In the American
Civil War, about 185,000 men were killed in action or died of wounds. Another
186,000 died of diseases associated with the war. Civilian casualties are unrecorded.

April 27, 2000 (AD) Cloned Xena and Gabrielle escape from the clandestine
lab of Alexis Los Alamos, (Alti), in City of Industry, California.

September 21, 2000 (AD) Dr. Janice Covington, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus
of Archeology at the University of S.C. passes away after a third stroke. Ray
Fell, her colleague and one-time graduate teaching assistant had introduced the
soulmates to her on June 2. She had used her old contacts in the underworld to
provide personal identities for the clones, who settle down with her in Columbia
S.C., in the old Pappas family house. Janice makes Serena Pappas and Gabriella
Covington her heirs, and the inheritors of the Pappas estate. The clones learn
the truth of their origin.

April 30, 2001 (AD) The cloned soulmates travel to New Zealand and
confront Lucy, Renée, and Rob on the set of the final episode of the TV show,
Xena Warrior Princess. They learn the secret of how the show was conceived and
confirm their suspicions that an old influence is again active in the modern
world. (End of Part 1)

June 1, 2001 (AD) The clones open the Columbia School of Martial Science.
Their first students are the Columbia, S.C. police officers, Marcus Lewis and
Alexander Williams.

September 13, 2001 (AD) Gabrielle wins the Women’s Division of the
23rd National Open Full Contact Martial Arts Championships, to honor
the soulmates’ fallen student, Marcus Lewis, who was killed in a hijacked plane
on Sept. 11, in Stony Creek Township, PA. On the same day, Xena foils a bio-terrorist
hostage situation in Quantico, Va., which initiates the clones’ contact with
the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team.

September 16 to October 14, 2001 (AD) The soulmates serve as guest
instructors in unarmed combat to the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, at the FBI compound
in the Quantico Marine Base, Quantico, Virginia. They have also drawn the interest
of a covert government agency, the shadow organization, Omega Sector. A team
led by agent Harry Tasker investigates them, while at the same time forestalling
investigation by other government intelligence agencies.

November 2, 2001 (AD) The Columbia School of Martial Science is attacked
by clones of Callisto and her disciple, Mavican. Those clones are defeated by
Xena and Gabrielle and then tracked when they flee by agents of Omega Sector,
who subsequently contact the soulmates about a covert mission.

November 7, 2001 (AD) The clones are recruited by Harry Tasker to join
in a mission to neutralize a secret DOE cloning facility near Atlanta, Georgia.
During that mission the Destroyer of Nations is reborn. (End of Part 2)

November 8, 2001 (AD) The clone of Elainis of Mycenae attacks the Columbia
School of Martial Science. Because of that battle's outcome, the Destroyer of
Nations accepts the Blessing of the God of War and embraces her ancient heritage.
Serena Pappas disappears and the Pappas estate is taken over by Artiphys International,
a subsidiary of the DON GROUP, Inc., an investment consortium ultimately headed
by Kori Polemos.

November 10, 2001 (AD) The Destroyer of Nations claims the Chakram
of Day.

March 28, 2002 (AD) Mass cloning of Xena's army begins in two locations.
The initial work had already been completed over the previous three months.

June 1, 2002 (AD) During the first successful flight test of a scramjet
engine in Woomera, S. Australia, a speed of Mach 8.6 is achieved.

September 11, 2002 (AD) Athena opens her war by proxy. The United States
attacks Iraq and Afghanistan with air strikes, which include the use of nuclear
weapons. Days earlier, a covert war had begun using engineered bioweapons to
cause epidemics in North Korea and the Sudan. The combined death toll eventually
tops 3.5 million.

September 12, 2002 (AD) The Destroyer of Nations is successful in enlisting
the leading theoretical researcher in nanotechnology, and isolates him with a
support team at her lab in Yokohama. The DON GROUP has invested extensively in
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, providing the Destroyer with a manufacturing base
and technological assets in Japan.

December 2003 (AD) Athena's forces release an engineered plague in
Beijing. The death toll eventually climbs to 27.5 million.

April 1, 2004 (AD) Two genetically enhanced clones mature to the point
that they are able to escape the primary lab site and join the Destroyer of Nations.
These are Prima and Secunda, the "specials”.

January 17, 2006 (AD) The Persian Gulf oil reserves are struck and
neutralized.

January 18, 2006 (AD) The "Second Phase" is complete and
a migration begins.

March 2, 2006 (AD) The Destroyer of Nations' army emerges from the
mirror site.

April 12, 2006 (AD) The Destroyer of Nations lands her army at Kavala
in Macedonia.

April 22, 2006 (AD) The Destroyer of Nations successfully defeats Athena’s
armies in a three pronged preemptive counterattack.

May 5-7, 2006 (AD) The Destroyer drives Athena’s army from their camp
in Macedonia.

May 15, 2006 (AD) The Destroyer of Nations draws Athena’s army into
battle at her selected location in the Strymon Vale. She defeats them decisively
but refuses their surrender, preferring to leave them demoralized.

May 22, 2006 (AD) The Destroyer of Nations annihilates Athena’s army
in a final battle and captures the Goddess of Wisdom. Xena becomes the Conqueror,
but circumstances cause her to postpone completing her subjugation of the modern
world.

June 6, 2006 (AD) The Conqueror abdicates her position and leaves the
modern world.

March 17, 44 BC The clones of Xena, Gabriella, and Secunda return to
Thrace after correcting the timeline at Aulis. (End of Part 3)

_____________________________________________________________

Addendum On June 6th, 2006 in the altered
timeline, Xena the Conqueror, accompanied by two "special” clones, her soulmate,
and her prisoner, Athena, traveled back in time to correct the problem with fate
that had begun with the events at the Sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis. Afterwards,
one "special” clone (Prima) remained behind to insure the fall of Ilios (Troy)
and the training of Antiope, while the other accompanied the Conqueror, her soulmate,
and the prisoner back to Xena and Gabrielle’s original time period. The "special” clone
(Secunda) went to Rome to avenge the soulmates by slaying Callisto and recovering
the Chakram of Night, and then took up her mission in the Amazon village. After
releasing Athena, cloned Xena and Gabrielle made their way to Amphipolis, returning
there two days after their crucifixion in Rome at the hands of Julius Caesar.
They resumed the goals of original soulmates’ lives, the reform and retraining
of Eve.

In the corrected timeline, Serena Pappas and Gabriella Covington lived the
lives they had originally been fated to live, as the grandnieces of Melinda Pappas
and Janice Covington, not as clones created by Alti. In the corrected modern
world there would be no plot for world domination by Athena, no resulting rise
of the Destroyer of Nations, no cloned armies, and no worldwide destruction.
Fate returned to its intended course, allowing two teachers, descendants of the
warrior and the bard, to free the last souls who had been caught up in the altered
timeline of Athena, Ares, and the Conqueror.